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Bill Bennett (director)

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Bill Bennett
Born1953 (age 70–71)
Occupation(s)Film director, film producer, screenwriter
Years active1983–present

Bill Bennett (born 1953) is an Australian film director, producer and screenwriter.

He dropped out of Medicine at the University of Queensland in 1972 and joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a journalist. During a ten-year career as a journalist he won Australia's top TV award, the Logie Awards (Australia's Emmy) for Television Reporter of the Year, and then later for Most Outstanding Documentary. This led him to feature films.

Bennett has directed 16 feature films since 1983. His film Backlash was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.[1] Three years later his film Malpractice would be screened in the same section at the 1989 festival.[2]

Career

Bennett was born in London to Australian parents and brought up in Brisbane. He studied journalism and got a cadetship with the ABC in 1972. He spent two years working in Adelaide on This Day Tonight then went to work for Mike Willesee in Sydney. He then worked on The Big Country and The Australians before moving into feature filmmaking with A Street to Die (1985).[3]

Selected filmography

  • A Street to Die (1985) (feature film): writer/producer/director
  • Backlash (1986): writer/producer/director
  • Dear Cardholder 1987 (feature film): writer/producer/director
  • Jilted (feature film 1988): writer/producer/director
  • Malpractice (1989): writer/director
  • Mortgage (feature film 1990): writer/director
  • The Banjo & The Bard (drama documentary 1991): writer/producer/director
  • Last Man Hanged (drama documentary 1992) producer
  • Spider and Rose (feature film 1994): writer/director
  • Two if by Sea (feature film 1995): director
  • Kiss or Kill (feature film 1996): writer/producer/director
  • Cut (feature film 1998): writer (uncredited)/producer
  • In a Savage Land (feature film 1999): writer/producer/director
  • Tempted (feature film 2000): writer/producer/director
  • The Nugget (2002): writer/producer/director
  • Deck Dogz (feature film 2003): producer
  • Uninhabited (2010): writer/producer/director

References

  1. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Backlash". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 12 July 2009.
  2. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Malpractice". festival-cannes.com. Archived from the original on 3 October 2012. Retrieved 2 August 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, Pan MacMillan, 1990 p54