LANGUAGE OF LIGHT, THE

Intimate portraits of seven ground-breaking Australian photographers, each with a significant body of work and each with a different photographic style.

All 7 films are included on a dual-layer DVD. Individual films are also available as digital files - for home, education and screenings. Each film is approx. 25 mins.

VIEW TRAILER HERE: vimeo.com/1029150896

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1. Ponch Hawkes - feminist photographer.

A Melbournian, Ponch's work has explored themes to do with women, sport (including circus), female bodies, relationships and identity.

Starting out in the Pram Factory and early Circus Oz period, Ponch photographed circus performers, then extended out to portrayals of artists, feminists, sports people and others. Her first exhibited work was Our Mums and Us, featuring her female friends and their mothers, amongst them writer Helen Garner. More recent projects such as Flesh after 50 / 500 Strong exhibitions have explored the ageing female body.

Hawkes' extensive career is considered an influential part of the Australian Feminist art movement.

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2. John Street - formerly a commercial photographer, now an art photographer.

Born in the UK John spent the first 15 years of his life in and out of different orphanages. He remembers light being an important thing to him as he lay in fields as a child, looking up at the sky.

John subsequently became a merchant seaman, then returned to London in the swinging 60s and became a commercial photographer. He migrated to Australia and continued this work, being acclaimed as a very exacting food photographer. At a later stage John swapped to an ultra-large format camera to compose unique, one-off art photographs, which he describes as 'slow photography'. At the age of 90 he has now sold his large camera but continues to make photographs that are more of a combination of art and photography – 'painting with light'.

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3. Jacqueline Mitelman - portrait photographer

Born in Scotland and migrating to Australia as a child, Jacqueline has lived and worked in Melbourne apart from a period living in France. She has worked as a freelance photographer focusing primarily on portraiture. A wide range of private commissions has resulted in an extensive collection of portraits of culturally significant Australians, described as "fusing the intensity of the moment with stillness of icons" (Dr Vivien Gaston).

Jacqueline was awarded the National Photographic Portrait Prize in 2011. Her works are held in public institutions and private collections in Australia and internationally.

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4. Meredith O'Shea - photojournalist.

Born into a working class family in Melbourne, Meredith's father chose to move them to very outer suburban greenery and freedom. She preferred horse-riding to school, but became interested in film and photography.

Meredith was scooped up by the Age newspaper as soon as they saw her folio, and they have been her main employer for the last two decades. She creates most of her own story concepts for the newspaper and believes her working class background allows her to relate more easily to her subjects. She covers difficult issues and engages with her subjects at a profound level of intimacy, revealing hauntingly beautiful photographs of her subjects at their most vulnerable. And then there are the beautiful photos of her children, which she started taking during COVID.

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5. Ricky Maynard - an Indigenous documentary photographer.

An Indigenous Tasmanian photographer, Ricky started as a darkroom technician at the age of 16.

In viewing the racist treatment of Indigenous people in the past via colonial photos, Ricky started questioning the photographer's role, the influence of the image in society and its persuasive power. It changed the way he viewed and made pictures: "this misrepresentation of Australia's first nation people became a lifelong pursuit of providing insight into a tragic past and providing a profound, in-depth personal interpretation rooted in my own Aboriginal experience." Ricky also struggled with alcoholism along the way and says that photography saved his life.

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6. Emmanuel Santos - art and documentary photographer.

Born on an island in the Philippines, Emmanuel was a photographer for the UN when he met and married an Australian. He migrated to Australia, finding an affinity in East St Kilda with the Orthodox Jewish community (about whom he authored the book Observances). He subsequently produced another book photographing the Jewish diaspora throughout the world (Israel; one land, one people, one dream). He has had his art photography exhibited throughout the world, and considers photography to be 'learning the language of light".

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7. Ashley Gilbertson - photojournalist & war photojournalist.

Born In Melbourne, Australia, Ashley now lives and works in New York. In his teens Ashley started photographing his skateboarding friends. He had a good eye and was subsequently mentored by Emmanuel Santos (above), becoming very involved in filming Kosovar refugees in Australia – he thanks John Howard for starting his career by making him so angry about the refugee issue!

Ashley headed overseas to film refugees in other parts of the world and ended up in the Kurdish enclave of northern Iraq just before the Iraq war started. When the war began he became embedded with US marines, eventually publishing a book of his time there called Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: a Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War. During his time there a marine assisting him was shot in the head directly in front of him and Ashley had to be flown back to the US with PTSD. In the US he subsequently made another emotional book – Bedrooms of the Fallen - using photographs of the bedrooms left behind by 40 fallen soldiers.

Since this time Ashley has photographed many subjects for the New York Times, and has returned to Melbourne for the launch of an exhibition of his work at the National Gallery of Victoria about the COVID period in New York, titled Requiem to New York.

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SERIES PRODUCTION TEAM:

Producer/ Director – Fiona Cochrane

Editor – Chris Cochrane-Friedrich

Cinematographer –Mark Street

Sound – David Muir

(c) 2023, F-reel Pty Ltd

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FESTIVALS

For PONCH HAWKES:

Nominee at 2026 Miami Women Film Festival, USA
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for 2025 International Portrait Film Festival, Bulgaria
Official Selection for 2025 Toronto Women Film Festival, Canada
Official Selection at 2025 International Images Film Festival for Women, Zimbabwe
Official Selection at 2026 Worldwide Women's Film Festival, USA
Official Selection at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada

For JOHN STREET:
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for the 2025 Symbiotic Film Festival, Ukraine

For JACQUELINE MITELMAN:
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Nominee at 2026 Miami Women Film Festival, USA
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for 2023 International Portrait Film Festival, Bulgaria
Official Selection at 2026 Worldwide Women's Film Festival, USA

For MEREDITH O'SHEA:
Nominee for the 2025 Toronto Women Film Festival, Canada
Nominee at 2026 Miami Women Film Festival, USA
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for 2025 International Portrait Film Festival, Bulgaria
Official Selection at 2025 International Images Film Festival for Women, Zimbabwe

For RICKY MAYNARD:
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Winner - Best International Photography Documentary Short at 2024 Unban Mediamakers Film Festival, USA
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia

For EMMANUEL SANTOS:
Audience Choice Award Honourable Mention at 2025 YoFiFest, USA
Finalist in Documentary Short Film at 2025 Richmond International F/F, USA
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for the 2025 Symbiotic Film Festival, Ukraine

For ASHLEY GILBERTSON:
Outstanding Achievement Award for Documentary Short at 2025 Best Shorts Competition
& Award of Excellence: Liberation/Social Justice/Protest at 2025 Best Shorts Competition
Outstanding Achievement Award for Documentary Short at 2025 Accolade Global Film Competition. USA
Award of Excellence at 2025 Global Shorts awards, USA
Nominated for Best Documentary for the 2025 Festival of Cinema NYC
Nominated for Best Documentary for the 2025 New York Cinefest
Finalist at 2025 Jackson Doc Fest, USA
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for the 2025 Symbiotic Film Festival, Ukraine
Official Selection for 2025 Athens Festival Film, Greece
Official Selection at 2025 Richmond International Film Festival, USA

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