A Century of Spies, Lies and Scandals with Annabel Crabb KEY CREATIVES This documentary brings together a highly experienced team who all have strong journalistic and film‐making credentials. Presenter Annabel Crabb worked in Canberra for 10 years, and is now featuring on diverse TV shows such as The Drum, Rambling and Kitchen Cabinet. Director Ian Walker has recently been working back at the ABC as a journalist, on Big Ideas. He specialises in subversive film noir documentaries. EP Simon Nasht began his career as a journalist, also working in the Canberra Press Gallery. He has recently produced some of Australia’s most successful documentaries. Producer Anna Cater was born in Canberra and worked there as a journalist for many years, before becoming a documentary producer. BIOGRAPHIES ANNABEL CRABB Presenter Annabel is currently the ABC’s chief online political writer, and presenter of ABC‐TV’s The Drum program and the recent Kitchen Cabinet series. She has been a journalist for more than 12 years, covering national politics for 10. She began working in the Canberra Press Gallery in 1999. She was hired by The Age in 2000, and worked as House On The Hill columnist and political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald before travelling to London in 2003 to work as London correspondent for the Sunday Age and Sun‐Herald newspapers. While she was in London she wrote a book, Losing It: The Inside Story of the Labor Party in Opposition. In 2007, she returned to Australia as a senior writer and political columnist for The SMH. Annabel wrote a Quarterly Essay entitled Stop At Nothing: The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull, which won a 2009 Walkley Award for best magazine feature writing. 1
IAN WALKER Writer/Director In his nearly 20 years of film‐making, writing and broadcasting, Ian Walker has made a name for himself making the "ordinary" extra‐ordinary and the “real” surreal, a genre he describes as "magic realist" documentary. He can give a serious twist to light‐hearted subject…and, with serious topics, adds intelligent humour, stylish visuals and audacious storytelling devices. Ian’s directing credits include the acclaimed documentary I, Psychopath (ARTE Germany/ABC Australia/CBC Canada) in which he seeks out a diagnosis for a suspected corporate psychopath. The film was selected to screen at IDFA in 2009 and won him Best Director at the 2010 Scinema Awards. His previous film, Over My Dead Body (2007), an investigation of the human tissue trade, won the Scinema Jury Prize for best film in 2008. In the same year, he won Best Narration Award at the prestigious International Wildlife Film Festival in the US, for Feral Peril (ABC). Other directing credits include the 3 x one hour history of Australian theatre Raising the Curtain (SBS/Stvdio), the 10‐part SBS series Dave in the Life; Dust to Dust, a six‐part series for ABC inside a funeral parlour in Sydney’s “Little Italy”; episodes of the highly‐
praised SBS series Two of Us; and The Hacktivists, about the secret world of internet activism. SIMON NASHT Producer As a journalist and film‐maker, Simon Nasht has worked in more than 30 countries. His documentaries have won many awards prizes including the Prix Jules Verne for international history film of the year in 2002, two nominations for the NSW Premier’s History Prize, a Banff nomination and a Logie and Australian Writer’s Guild and Director’s Guild awards, and shared the Eureka Prize for Science Journalism in 2009. Since his return to Australia in 2004 he has been taking Australian stories to the world, including Sir Hubert Wilkins, Voyage of the Nautilus (with National Geographic); photographer Frank Hurley, The Man Who Made History (BBC, ABC); and Errol Flynn, Tasmanian Devil (BBC and ARTE). Simon wrote and directed a film on the Sydney Harbour Bridge for Film Australia and the ABC, the ABC’s highest rated documentary of the year, watched by nearly 2 million Australians. Simon was writer/director on the major 3 part series Addicted To Money for ABC/RTE and S4C in 2009. In 2010 he directed and produced the polemical film Dick Smith’s Population Puzzle for the ABC. It was the highest rating ABC documentary of the year and was followed by a 1‐hour Q&A panel discussion ‐ the highest rated show of its kind on Australian TV. 2
In 2010 Simon founded a new production company with Dick Smith, specialising in global issue films. Smith & Nasht’s first film – I Can Change Your Mind About Climate – aired successfully on the ABC in 2012 and was also followed by a high‐rating Q&A. ANNA CATER Producer Anna began her career as a print journalist in Canberra and has written for newspapers and magazines around the world, as well as working for the ABC’s Background Briefing radio and Four Corners TV programs. She began her documentary production company Mitra Films more than 15 years ago, producing many documentaries for Australian and international broadcasters. Her documentary producer credits include the award‐
winning films Dick Smith’s Population Puzzle (ABC); Frank Hurley – the Man Who Made History (BBC, ABC); Outsourced! (PBS, SBS); and Honeybee Blues (SBS). She has worked for Oxfam in the UK and Australia and ACOSS, and is currently producing the feature film Rites of Passage with community arts organisation BE. Kate Hodges Producer This is the second collaboration between Kate Hodges and Simon Nasht. In 2012 they co‐produced the AACTA nominated ABC documentary I Can Change Your Mind About Climate. Prior to this Kate worked as a field producer for the 7.30 Report and co‐
produced After the Deluge, The Valley a one‐hour documentary about the flash flooding that decimated the Lockyer Valley in 2011. It was a finalist in the 2011 Walkley Awards & nominated for a Logie. During a 25‐year career in the television industry Kate’s worked as a producer, researcher & production manager for some of the ABC’s most prestigious programs including Foreign Correspondent, Q&A and Four Corners as well as CNN International and Channel 7. Karin Steininger Editor Karin’s awards include an AFI award for Ballet Russes ‐ A Thousand Encores, a CINE Golden Eagle award for Shadowplay and an Academy Award for Anne Frank Remembered. In 2011 Karin edited the 3‐part dramatised history series, Australia on Trial: The Mount Rennie Outrage, and a science series, Australia ‐ Land that Time Forgot. She also edited the second series of Gourmet Farmer and worked with Simon Nasht & Kate Hodges on I Can Change Your Mind About Climate. Her previous documentaries include Space Traveller, Darwin’s Brave New World, Dead Tired ‘Planet Insomnia’, Rod’s Robot Revolution, Rogue Nation, Secrets of the Forbidden City, Indonesia ‐ a Reporters Journey, Over my Dead Body and Race to the Beach. 3
Peter Coleman DoP Peter Coleman was awarded Australian Cinematographers Society NSW awards in 2009 for Dead Tired (ep1) and Deadly Women, Series 3 (Mothers Who Kill). In 2008 he won the Golden Tripod Australian Cinematographers Society National Award for the dramatised documentary, Bom Bali. Other films to win him awards from the ACS include Constructing Australia ‐ The Bridge, Hired Assassins, The Living Edens, Tasmania ‐ Land of the Devils and Island Life – Christmas Island. He worked with Simon Nasht & Kate Hodges on I Can Change Your Mind About Climate. 4