ALEJANDRA CANALES

Mentor

Dr. Alejandra Canales is an award-winning documentary filmmaker with an extensive career in directing, producing, curating and programming, and teaching and curriculum development. She holds an MA Hons from AFTRS (2005) and a Doctor of Creative Arts from the renowned Institute of Culture and Society at Western Sydney University (2011).

Alejandra is an experienced educator across documentary and screen media, both practice and theory. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Documentary at AFTRS. Previous teaching roles include NYU Sydney, Western Sydney University, Sydney Film School, and The National Institute of Dramatic Arts, NIDA.

Alejandra has been an artist in residence at numerous prestigious international programmes such as 5 Sur 5 in La Louviere, Belgium (2006) and IDFAcademy in The Netherlands (2008). She has also been awarded multiple art scholarships and prestigious grants including the Ian Potter Cultural Trust (2009). As a grounded community educator, Alejandra is grateful and honoured to have had the opportunity to designed and lead short training courses with aboriginal communities in Australia, vulnerable communities in Chile, and refugee youth in Western Sydney. More recently, she has been part of several mentoring programs such as Leading Lights for the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC), MentorHer for Women in Film and Television (WIFT) and Curious Women for Curious Works.

Her documentary film work as both director and producer has been broadcast at the ABC and screened at several festivals worldwide including IDFA (The Netherlands), Sheffield DocFest (UK), CPHDOX (Denmark), Cinema del Donne (Italy), Vision du Reel (Switzerland). The International Documentary Association in Los Angeles; Melbourne Film Festival and Sydney Film Festival. In 2006 she won the Dendy Award at Sydney Film Festival and the ATOM award. She received a special mention from the Film Critics Circle of Australia 2007 and was nominated for an IF Independent Spirit Award 2007.

Alejandra was co-founder and co-Director of the inaugural version of Antenna Documentary Film Festival (Sydney, 2010) and was part of the programming team for several years.

She is currently working across virtual reality, immersive storytelling and mixed realities and recently presented her work at Sheffield Doc/Fest in the UK and NewImage Festival in Paris.

JOSH MCCARTY

Mentor

Josh McCarthy is the Program Director: Film and Television at the University of South Australia, and oversees the Bachelor of Film and Television, Graduate Certificate in Compositing and Tracking, the Graduate Certificate in Dynamic Effects and Lighting, and the Graduate Certificate in Film and Television. Josh teaches across a diverse array of disciplines, including film, photography, digital media and visual effects.

NICOLE MILLER

Mentor

Nicole is a skilled storyteller with credits in both narrative and documentary projects. She has produced and directed The AFL Show, a 25-episode series introducing AFL to a Chinese audience, and Power Dreaming, which explores the power of football in Indigenous communities. She was a producer on series two of Chef Exchange, which screened across QTV in China, Discovery SouthEast Asia and SBS Food. Nicole recently directed a short documentary Deafinition, in partnership with the SA Film Corporation and SBS, which aired on SBS’s Short Film Festival in early September 2019. Her debut feature documentary This Is Port Adelaide was in cinemas across Australia from April 2021.

DOROTHY STARUCHOWICZ

Mentor

Dorothy Staruchowicz is the South Australian Business Development for Media Super: the $7b industry super fund for print, media, entertainment and arts professionals, looking after the retirement savings for members of our creative communities.

With extensive experience working in superannuation and financial services, Dorothy has represented Media Super in South Australia for 20 years helping members engage in and understand their super better, ultimately providing them with more choices surrounding retirement.

JUSTIN DONOGUE

Mentor

Justin Donoghue has over twenty years’ experience working in film and television development, production and distribution. In London he worked on projects for Hallmark Entertainment, Channel Four Films, Channel Five, Downtown Pictures and Kudos Film and Television.  He has worked on the development and production of a diverse slate of feature films in the UK, Europe and South Africa. In 2011 he returned to Australia and joined Screen NSW as a Development and Production Executive and also ran the Aurora script development program. Justin joined Screen Australia as a Development Executive in late 2014 and has worked across drama development and initiatives for features, series, shorts and on-line.