Writer/director Jane Campion, who completed the 1983 Diploma Directing, wins the Best Original Screenplay for The Piano at the 66th Academy Awards. The film is nominated for eight awards, including Best Director, with Campion only the second woman in Oscars history to be nominated.
Campion also won the prestigious Palme D’Or at Cannes Film Festival for The Piano, becoming the first female director to receive the prize. Campion would go onto write and direct Holy Smoke, Bright Stars, TV series Top of the Lake and feature film Power of the Dog, for which she would win her second Academy Award – for Best Achievement in Directing, and again make history as the third woman to win the title.
First Nations writer/director Catriona McKenzie commences studies as a scholar as part of the AFTRS/DEET Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) Recruitment and Career Development Strategy.
As part of her studies, McKenzie undertakes an attachment with CAAMA Productions in the Northern Territory and participates in a student exchange program with New York University’s Tisch School of Arts. McKenzie graduates at the May 1996 ceremony with fellow scholar Rachel Perkins, who both receive extension certificates in their specialisation32.
McKenzie goes on to complete the Master of Arts (Film & Television) (Hons) Directing in 2000 and makes the graduate short The Third Note. She writes and directs the 2012 feature film Satellite Boy and is now a prolific television director, working across both Australia and the US on titles including Redfern Now, Dance Academy, How to Get Away with Murder, Riverdale, The Walking Dead, and new Disney+ series Echo.
Music composition courses start to be included in the fulltime curriculum. This follows the Year of the Composer in 1991, where AFTRS organised 17 courses, seminars and events that included a workshop with James Horner 33 and the commencement of the composer-in-residence scheme in 1995, initiated with financial support from the Australian Guild of Screen Composers (AGSC) and Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA) to raise the awareness of the principles and processes of musical composition for the screen.
Over time, AFTRS would introduce a Graduate Diploma in Screen Composition and then the Master of Arts Screen: Music. Graduates of screen composition degrees include Antony Partos, President of the Australian Guild of Screen Composers (2020 – present) and five-time AACTA winner; another five-time AACTA winner Matteo Zingales; as well as Caitlin Yeo, the first female president of the Australian Guild of Screen Composers Guild who won two AACTA Awards in 2021 – for her television score for New Gold Mountain and documentary score for Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story.
Writer/director Chris Noonan, who was in the original 1973 Interim Training Scheme cohort, is nominated for two Academy Awards for his work on beloved family feature Babe – Best Director and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published.
Writer/director Shirley Barrett wins the Camera d’Or – Cannes Film Festival’s award for best first feature film – for her debut Love Serenade.34
Part of the 1987 cohort for the Bachelor of Arts (Film & Television) Writing & Directing, Barrett’s final year film Cherith won both the Dendy and AFI Awards for Best Short Fiction and the Prix Canal+ award. Aside from Love Serenade, Barrett wrote and directed the features Walk the Talk (2000) and South Solitary (2010), which opened the Sydney Film Festival, and worked extensively in Australian television with credits including A Country Practice, Heartbreak High, Police Rescue, Packed To The Rafters, House Husbands, Love Child, A Place to Call Home, Offspring, Five Bedrooms and Home And Away.
Barrett passed away on 3 August 2022 after a long illness and in 2023 was posthumously awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts in Film and Television by AFTRS.
Radio goes on the road
In collaboration with AFTRS, the first Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters’ (FARB) commercial radio course in programming commences. A one-year, distance education course, it’s four years in the planning, with AFTRS providing research into training needs, curriculum advice and administrative support.
Twenty-eight radio station managers and program directors are mentors for the initial 35 students. The course is the first of its kind in Australia and believed to be a world first.35
VFX and Animation
The School keeps up-to-date with rapidly changing technology in its teaching and facilities and in 1996, a new high-end training centre opens with Silicon Graphics (SGI) platforms, an Onyx Infinite Reality dual processor and state-of-the-art software for digital visual effects and computer imaging and animation. A three-month certificate in Computer Animation is also introduced with 10 participants.36
Courses become post-grad
The school adopts a new curriculum following re-accreditation of the fulltime Bachelor of Arts (Film and Television) course to post-graduate level from 1997.
Post-graduate courses of one and two-years duration lead to Graduate Diploma, Master of Arts, and Master of Arts (Hons). Students still have a specialty (Writing, directing, producing, design, cinematography, sound, editing, digital media and screen studies) but Masters students also have a strand: drama (film & TV), television (drama & comedy), documentary (film & TV) and digital media. Documentary and Digital Media are part of the new strands.
The Gonski report published in January 1997 is supportive of the changes, saying: “The recent move by the AFTRS to post-graduate level training, and its role in assisting existing industry employees to upgrade their skills, sufficiently differentiates AFTRS from training provided by State-based institutions to ensure that any overlap has been removed. This… will be highly valuable to the industry.38
The Documentary Strand is introduced as part of the new Masters curriculum, with Head of Documentary Trevor Graham also overseeing the Documentary Unit for the Graduate Diploma.
Twelve short documentaries are produced in 1997/98 alone with the Annual Report stating “The profile of AFTRS as a producer of documentary shorts and working graduates has been substantially strengthened.”
In 2001 the Documentary Department introduced a new course structure to the existing syllabus and divided it two strands, with students completing a Masters as either a documentary producer or a documentary writer/director. Documentary remains an important part of AFTRS study to this day, particularly through the Master of Arts Screen: Documentary degree.
The debut feature from director Rachel Perkins, Radiance, wins the audience vote for best feature film at both Sydney Film Festival and later Melbourne International Film Festival. A Arrente/Kalkadoon woman from Central Australia, Perkins founded Blackfella Films in 1992 and completed a certificate in producing at AFTRS in 1995.
She has since gone onto become a celebrated writer, director and producer, working across features such as Jasper Jones and One Night the Moon, television series such as Mystery Road and Total Control, telemovies like Mabo, and documentary series including First Australians and The Australian Wars, which won the AACTA Awards for Best Direction in Nonfiction Television and Best Documentary. She was also the 2002 recipient of the Byron Kennedy Award for outstanding creative enterprise within the industry.
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