“What’s noticeable is how utterly fresh [Rose Myers’] direction for the screen is. There’s a feeling you are watching something special.”
Girl Asleep makes its world premiere at the 2015 Adelaide Film Festival on 20 October. Tickets from $15, and available online at adelaidefilmfestival.org. The film will be released nationally in cinemas in 2016.
Rosemary Myers is the Artistic Director of Windmill Theatre, an award-winning national performing arts company based in Adelaide, South Australia.
A multi-Helpmann Award nominated director, her productions regularly visit leading stages and festivals around Australia and the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Melbourne’s International Comedy Festival and New York City’s New Victory Theatre. Her directing credits for Windmill include the multi-award winning Pinocchio, The Wizard of Oz, Fugitive, School Dance, Big Bad Wolf and Girl Asleep.
Prior to Windmill, Rosemary was the Artistic Director of Arena Theatre Company and also the Artistic Director of Queensland Performing Arts Centre’s Out of the Box Festival in 2010. Rosemary has worked independently for ABC Television, Back to Back Theatre Company, Victorian College of the Arts, Queensland Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company. In 2006, she was a Creative Director for the Melbourne Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony. Girl Asleep is Rosemary’s feature film debut.
Matthew is an actor and writer who has worked extensively in theatre, film and television for the past 17 years. Matt’s first play Twelve was workshopped at the National Playwrights Conference in Perth, 2006. His second was Silver, directed by Ben Winspear for Belvoir downstairs in which he also performed solo. In 2010 two further plays premiered in Adelaide; Fugitive (Windmill) and Harbinger (Brink Productions) beginning what has become an ongoing creative bond with the city and its audiences. In the same year, Matt was the Philip Parsons Young Playwright Award recipient sparking the development of the play Old Man which premiered downstairs in Belvoir’s 2012 season.
Matt’s collaboration with Windmill has resulted in four plays with Girl Asleep being the most recent. Its predecessors are the Helpmann and Sydney Theatre Awards-winning School Dance and Big Bad Wolf. The trilogy of School Dance, Fugitive and Girl Asleep ran concurrently at the 2014 Adelaide Festival. Matt’s two hander Cinderella garnered outstanding reviews at the close of 2014 in the Belvoir downstairs space and his most recent play Seventeen premieres in the upstairs theatre in 2015. Matt was among the seven Sidney Myer Creative Fellows chosen in 2012.
Girl Asleep is Matt’s first screenplay for a feature film.
Jo’s debut film, Michael James Rowland’s Lucky Miles was released in 2007 and won awards including the Audience Award for Best Film at Sydney Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Lucky Miles was also nominated for Best Film and Best Screenplay at the 2007 AFI and IF Awards and alongside co-producer Lesley Dyer, Jo was honoured with the Best Producer award at the Asian First Awards. Her follow up film, Michael Kantor’s The Boy Castaways premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2014 and on ABC television after a national release, before premiering internationally in 2015.
Jo also contributed a chapter to the acclaimed feature anthology Tim Winton’s The Turning, which premiered nationally at the 2013 Melbourne Film Festival and internationally at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival.
Andrew’s previous film The Rocket, won the Crystal Bear at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival, and Best Feature Film at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. The Rocket also won Best Feature Film at the 2014 Film Critics Circle of Australia (FCCA) Awards and was nominated for 12 Australian Academy of Cinema & Television Arts (AACTA) Awards including Best Film and Best Cinematography.
Andrew’s debut feature Beautiful Kate premiered at Toronto in 2010 and received the prestigious Milli Award from the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS) as the 2010 Cinematographer of the Year. The film received 10 Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards nominations including Best Film and Best Cinematography and also won the 2009 IF Award for Best Cinematography.
Andrew also shot the Emmy and BAFTA-nominated and AACTA award-winning television series The Slap, and received the ACS Award of Distinction for his work on the 2015 AACTA-winning television series Devil’s Playground. His numerous documentary credits include A Northern Town, winner of the 2008 AFI Award for Best Cinematography in a Documentary.
Andrew’s most recent feature film The Daughter, selected for the 2015 Venice and 2015 Toronto Film Festivals and starring Geoffrey Rush, will be released theatrically in 2016.
Jonathon studied illustration and sculpture at Queensland College of Art, and since leaving he has trained with Kid Praha in the Czech Republic focussing on puppetry.
As a theatre designer Jonathon has designed set and costumes for Queensland Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Circa, Kooemba Jdarra, Zen Zen Zo, Arena Theatre Company, Polyglot, Bell Shakespeare, Polytoxic, Men of Steel, Real TV Project, The Escapists, The Border Project and LaBoite Theatre.
Venues and festivals include Sydney Opera House, Melbourne Festival, Brisbane Festival, Adelaide Fringe, Sydney Theatre Company, The Malthouse and Queensland Art Gallery. As an illustrator he illustrated the picture book The Empty City for Hachette Livre/Lothian, the Edie Amelia series by Sophie Lee and was the Festival Designer for the 2010 Out of the Box Festival. For Windmill Theatre, Jonathon has designed Boom Bah!, Grug, The Wizard Of Oz, Fugitive, Escape From Peligro Island, School Dance, Girl Asleep, Big Bad Wolf, Grug And The Rainbow and Pinocchio.
Girl Asleep is Jonathon’s first production design for film.
Luke creates highly detailed soundtracks for theatre, dance and film, working across all areas of music composition, sound design, foley and sound effects editing.
Working under his business name motion laboratories Luke has composed and produced soundtracks for many Australian and International artists & companies. Various credits include: ʻGʼ (Australian Dance Theatre), Double Think (Byron Perry), Glow (Chunky Move), I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood in the rain (Gabrielle Nankivell), The Maids (Sydney Theatre Company), Wildebeest (Sydney Dance Company), Fugitive and School Dance & Girl Asleep (Windmill Theatre Company).
Harry Covill is a student at the Victorian College of the Arts. Still in the early stages of his career, he has composed music for theatre, film, video art and community arts. His work has been shown in a range of venues and festivals nationally and internationally: including the Melbourne Theatre Company, Brisbane Out of The Box Festival, Adelaide Festival Centre, the Melbourne Fringe and the Adelaide Film Festival and the Sheffield Documentary Festival. In 2014 and 2015 he was commissioned to write the score for the Fringe large-scale outdoor performances.
His debut feature film Girl Asleep will premiere at the 2015 Adelaide Film Festival.