Penny McDonald

Penelope McDonald, principal of Chili Films, an independent Australian production company, is an accomplished producer and director with a number of internationally acclaimed productions to her credit. In mid-2004 she took up a position as the inaugural Director of the newly established NT Film Television & New Media Office.

Chili Films produced the highly acclaimed feature documentary My Mother India for SBS Television. It has been a box office hit, screening for more than six months in Sydney. Much Ado About Something, with director Mike Rubbo, has screened on ABC, BBC and PBS, as well as touring theatrically in Australia.
Chili Films produced 12 state-of-the-millennium audio-visual installations that have been on permanent display in the Gallery of First Australians at the new National Museum of Australia since 2001.

Penelope McDonald and Chili Films' body of work explores culture and relationships between cultures, particularly between indigenous and other cultures, with the award- winning documentaries Too Many Captain Cooks, Black Sheep and Photographic Memory; and dramas My Mother My Son, My Bed Your Bed and Payback.

One of Penelope's early films, Night Cries, directed by Australian artist Tracey Moffat, was a finalist in Cannes in 1990 and has been one of Australia's most successful short films in the last decade.

In addition to her work with Chili Films, Penelope worked for many years with Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory. She worked in the education sector, with both children and adults, and has also been employed on contract by peak government film organisations including the Australian Film Television and Radio School, the New South Wales Film and Television Office and Film Australia. She was a founding member and past president of Women in Film and Television, and is a member of the Australian Film Institute.

Filmography

	MY MOTHER INDIA » Director Safina Uberoi traces her parents’ history. Her Australian mother married a Sikh and moved to India. There they bought up their three children and survived the anti-Sikh riots of 1984...
	MY MOTHER MY SON » The story of an Aboriginal mother and daughter [Mona & Kymmy], both victims of the stolen generation, who embark on a journey to regain custody of Kymmy's young son Rowland...
	TOO MANY CAPTAIN COOKS » In this film, Paddy Fordham Wainburranga of the Rembarrnga tribe from the centre of Arnhem Land in Northern Australia relates and paints the Rembarrnga history of Captain Cook...
	NIGHT CRIES » DIGITALLY REMASTERED! In basic narrative terms, NIGHT CRIES is a response to Charles Chauvel’s JEDDA (1955), about the fate of an Aboriginal baby adopted by a white mother in a remote outback station...
	FOUNDATION, The (NIDF series 5) » A documentary that intercuts interviews with historical footage to tell the history of The Foundation of Aboriginal Affairs, an organisation significant in the push for the 1967 referendum in which Aboriginal peoples were given the vote...
	BUCKSKIN » Jack Buckskin is a man whose mission is to sculpt a new urban Aboriginal language and culture, and through that bring hope back to his people...
	MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING » This lively odyssey into the land of Shakespeare introduces us to a delightful gallery of eccentric scholars who dispute the authorship of the plays...