ROBERT NUGENT
DIRECTOR
Rob grew up in Albury in Australia, where he was destined to be a printer. Instead he left home, worked in a blast furnace in a steel works, studied ecology at University, chased locusts around inland Australia for the Government, worked in the Northern Territory for three years and then for the UN for 11 years, mainly in Afghanistan and Cambodia. He has studied a Masters degree in Documentary film and set up Visible Impact Assessment, which looks at how film can be used by communities to monitor and evaluate change. His films include the IDFA First Appearance Award- Winner End of the Rainbow (SBS, ARTE, ITVS) and the No Dramas (Australian War Memorial), which followed Australian soldiers on deployment in Iraq. In 2008 he started making Memoirs of a Plague, which occupied a lot of his time for the next three years.
He is currently a Visiting Fellow in the Digital Humanities Hub of the Research School of Humanities at the Australian National University in Canberra, where he pursues interests in the applications of ethnographic cinema and man's relationship with nature.
DR. MITZI GOLDMAN
PRODUCER
LOOKING GLASS PICTURES PTY LTD
Mitzi has written, produced, edited and directed documentaries for over 20 years.
Her credits include Snakes And Ladders, Things I Call Mine, Many Homes, Many Names, Hatred, Ports Of Destiny, Parra, Chinese Take Away, Bloodlines and End of the Rainbow.
Her work, Memoirs of a Plague (Dir. Rob Nugent), was invited to IDFA 2010 for its World Premiere. She recently completed A Common Purpose (Prod/Dir) and is in post production with Love & Sex in an Age of Pornography (Prod/Dir), as well as an education, TV and online project for 8 – 12 year olds, Sprout Media By Kids.
Throughout her career Mitzi has combined documentary production with teaching. For 6 years, until 2008, Mitzi was Head of Documentary at the Australian Film Television and Radio School. In addition to running her production company, she is an Executive Director of the Documentary Australia Foundation – a philanthropic initiative to encourage private grants into the documentary sector. Mitzi is a founder and co-ordinator of Ozdox – the Australian Documentary Forum.
Mitzi holds a Phd in Cultural Studies and is on the board of directors of the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).
