Through its Film Development Branch, the AFC supports creative ambition in people and projects:

• project development funding
• creative professional development opportunities through production investment
• bridging loans against committed investor drawdowns, distribution guarantees and pre-sales through a cashflow facility

• feature films
• short feature films
• short films
• documentaries
• animation
• interactive digital media
• television.

Karin Altmann - Project Manager (Melbourne)

Karin Altmann’s work as a writer includes Blue Heelers and Something in the Air. Her work as a director includes the drama Six Pack-Death Duties and award-winning documentaries Raoul Wallenberg: Between the Lines and Holding On to What is Real. She regularly works as a narration writer and/or fixer on documentary projects and her work in this area includes Paradise Bent, Errands of Mercy and scripts for the ABC Natural History Unit. She also works as a script editor, assessor for various funding bodies and teaches occasionally at RMIT and AFTRS. Karin served on the boards of both the Screenwriters Conference and the National Documentary Conference. She chaired the Victorian Branch of the Australian Writers' Guild, was a member of the Evaluation Committee of Film Victoria and was a founding member of the Advisory Committee for the RMIT Professional Screenwriting Course.

Claire Jager - Project Manager (Melbourne)

Claire Jager ran production company Arcimedia, which produced such projects as The Magic Bullet for SBS, and the AFC/ABC interactive broadband project A Stowaway's Guide to the Pacific. Claire was previously Executive Producer and series producer for the ABC's Natural History Unit and the Head of Factual Division of Artists Services. She has held positions as Documentary Manager at Film Victoria and Documentary Commissioning Editor for SBS Independent. Claire's recent credits include Stories from the Stone Age (ABC), Testing Taklo (SBS) and, in association with Arcimedia, Rainbow Bird and Monster Man and Troubled Minds.

Mike Cowap - Project Manager (Melbourne)

Mike Cowap has worked as a Producer with digital media production company Monkeystack and as Development Executive for Picture Palace North (UK). Mike has extensive international experience, having worked as a Project Officer for the New Cinema Fund at the UK Film Council and as Script Consultant for the Danish Film Institute for the North by North West script program. Mike was Manager of Industry Development at the South Australian Film Corporation and has produced online games and mobile phone content for the ABC and mNet. Mike has an Honours Degree in Law and trained as a Script Editor with North by Northwest.

Lawrence Johnston - Project Manager (Melbourne)

Lawrence Johnston is an internationally award-winning writer/director/producer who began his career as a film repairer at 20th Century Fox. His second feature film Night was an Official Selection at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival and was released by Dendy Films. He is best known for his drama and documentary work on Night Out, which was an Official Selection at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival; Eternity, about Sydney’s infamous ‘Mr Eternity'; the feature drama Life, which won the FIPRESCI International Critic’s Prize at the 1996 Toronto Film Festival; and his other recent work for SBS, The Dream of Love and Once a Queen.

Lori Flekser - Acting Director, Film Development (Sydney)

Lori has worked in the Australian film and television industry since 1982 in a wide range of roles and film genres. Among her body of work are the projects Africa’s Elephant Kingdom (the first IMAX film made by The Discovery Channel), the six-part ABC series The Track, the post-9/11 PBS special Bitter Harvest and several large-scale documentary specials for The Discovery Channel including the Emmy Award winning series Submarines – Sharks of Steel. Lori is a frequent consultant to the documentary industry: planning, developing and budgeting projects and setting up the production infrastructure for companies embarking on projects.

Richard Brennan - Project Manager (Sydney)

Richard is an acclaimed producer with 40 years experience in the Australian film and TV industry. He began his career in 1964 at ABC TV and since then has worked on many well-known Australian films including Homesdale (producer), The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (production manager), The Love Letters from Teralba Road (producer), Newsfront (associate producer), which won eight AFI Awards including Best Film and Best Director for Phil Noyce, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (pre-production manager), Starstruck (co-producer), Stir (producer), Blood Oath (line producer), Spotswood (co-producer), Cosi (producer) and The Last of the Ryans (producer), which was a finalist in the AFI Awards for Best Mini-series. He most recently produced the Tropfest finalist short film All Shook Up. Richard was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1989 for services to the media, especially filmmaking.

Mark Lazarus - Project Manager (Sydney)

Mark is a graduate of the Australian Film Television and Radio School. He has produced two feature films, Australian Rules and Ravenswood (currently in post-production), and was Head of Development and Acquisitions at Ocean Pictures, where he was responsible for creating and maintaining relationships with key creative personnel, developing material and consulting on production. He brought a range of projects to the company, including Rabbit-Proof Fence. Before Ocean Pictures, he worked as the Creative Affairs Executive at Fox Icon Productions, where his responsibilities included finding and assessing screenplays and working with writers to develop acquired properties. The Rage in Placid Lake was among the projects he developed at Fox Icon. His first film credit was as a location scout on Troma, Inc.’s Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD. Mark also ran the Entertainment division of Australia’s largest television advertising production company, Film Graphics Entertainment, for three years, where he developed several features films and television projects.

Megan Simpson Huberman - Project Manager (Sydney)

Megan Simpson Huberman wrote and directed the feature film Dating the Enemy and has directed documentaries and television drama. Megan also directed the feature film Alex, the telemovie Mimi Goes to the Analyst, 3 x 1 hours of the TV drama series Fire, and the documentary War of Distance. She also works as a script editor, script analyst and journalist and has been a script assessor for various funding bodies. Megan has taught courses in feature, short feature and short film writing for AFTRS, the AFC and QPIX, and has been a writing and directing teacher and mentor for the AFC’s Indigenous workshops. Megan has also been a board member of the Australian Screen Director’s Association. While at the AFC, Megan has helped create the IndiVision initiative, and is the Director of the AFC’s IndiVision Project Lab.

Stephen Wallace - Project Manager (Sydney)

Stephen is a major Australian film writer/director and a dynamic former president of the Australian Screen Directors Association (ASDA). Stephen's directing credits include Turtle Beach, Blood Oath, Olive, Hunger, For Love Alone, The Boy Who Had Everything, Stir and Mail Order Bride.

Joan Sauers - Project Manager (Sydney)

Joan Sauers is a screenwriter and author who has worked in script development in the Australian film industry for the last 21 years. She began her career as assistant to director Lindsay Anderson in London in the early 1970s, and later read scripts for Barry Levinson and Francis Ford Coppola in Los Angeles. After working in casting for several years she formed a production company in New York, making documentaries for PBS and the BBC, as well as commercials. In Australia, she script edited many feature films, and was writer/storyliner on Heartbreak High and The Ferals. She has had ten books published, one of which was adapted as the ABC documentary Brothers and Sisters. She has been an advisor at the AFC’s SP*RK script lab four times and IndiVision three times, and advised at six Pygmalion script workshops in Europe.

Jackie McKimmie - Project Manager (Brisbane)

Jackie McKimmie is a writer/director who is best known for award-winning shorts Stations and No Problems, documentaries Breaking Through and Bon Bons and Roses for Dorothy, children’s telemovie Top Enders, and features Australian Dream, Waiting and Gino. She has written two plays, The Kiss and Daring Romance, directed plays by Nick Enright and Andrew Bovell at QTC and La Boite Theatre, and devised and directed Sweet Meats for Rock’n’Roll Circus. Most recently, Jackie was commissioned to write feature film and television scripts for a number of Sydney production houses including Fox Studios Australia, Millennium Pictures, Jim McElroy Holdings and Southern Star. Jackie also works as a script editor and producer. She has produced documentaries about the indigenous band Aim 4 More and for the SBS Australia by Numbers series, as well as the short drama Hey Sista! for SBS. Jackie has been a director at Indigenous workshops run by the AFC and by AFTRS, and has run writing/directing workshops for the QPIX Screenskills initiative.