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The Jury this year consists of:
Victoria Madden
Vicki lives in Tasmania and is the co-creator of the acclaimed sci-fi drama series The Kettering Incident (Foxtel/BBC Worldwide). She’s worked in television in Australia, Ireland and the UK, including as story producer on The Bill and working with Lynda La Plante on Trial and Retribution and on Australian dramas including Water Rats, Stingers and Halifax fp. She wrote the telemovie Blood Brothers, based on one of Australia’s most notorious criminal cases. Visit Vicki’s website, Sweet Potato Films for more info.
Vicki was on the Script Challenge Jury previously in 2013 and hosted a screenwriting panel at Stranger With My Face that year also. She was on the Short Films Jury in 2017.
Karen Lam
Starting her career as a producer and entertainment lawyer, Karen has produced four feature films, eight short films and three television series. Her first short film as a writer/director, The Cabinet won the NSI Drama Prize in 2006. She has since written nine feature film screenplays, and directed eight short films, a music video, two feature films, Stained (2010) and Evangeline (2013), and a webseries, Mythos (2015). Women in Film and Television – Vancouver awarded her with the Artistic Innovation Award for Women in Film in 2013.
Karen’s short Doll Parts screened at the inaugural Stranger With My Face in 2012 and her work has appeared twice more since then. She was previously a Script Challenge judge in 2012 and was a participant in 2014, with an Honourable Mention for her script Mrs Chang’s Perfect Teeth.
Colin Cairnes
After spending the latter part of the 90s directing some of South East Asia’s most popular television sitcoms, Colin and his brother Cameron co-wrote and directed a string of acclaimed shorts, before impressing with their debut feature, the horror comedy 100 Bloody Acres in 2013. The film went on to win the Midnight X-treme award at the prestigious Sitges Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the AACTA Awards. The brothers’ second feature film, the “wickedly entertaining” Scare Campaign was released in the in 2016. Colin directed all six episodes of the audacious new ABC/SeeSo comedy series, Fancy Boy.
This is Colin’s first involvement with the Tasmanian Gothic Short Script Challenge, although hopefully not his last.
Tansy Rayner Roberts
Tansy is an award-winning writer of science fiction, fantasy, feminist essays, and humour and lives in Tasmania. Her Creature Court trilogy was published by HarperCollins Voyager and her current projects include a gender-swapped retelling of The Three Musketeers as space opera and The Cafe La Femme murder mystery series by her alter ego Livia Day. Tansy is a co-host of Galactic Suburbia and Verity, and also has her own weekly fiction podcast, Sheep Might Fly. She has a PhD in Classics, and still obsesses about ancient literature when she isn’t busy obsessing about superheroes, musketeers and fictional hockey. Find out more on her website.
Briony Kidd
Briony is the co-founder and director of Stranger With My Face International Film Festival. A graduate of the VCA Film School in Melbourne she’s made numerous short films, including writing and directing The Room at the Top of the Stairs, which can be viewed on Shudder.com, and directing Watch Me, which is currently on the festival circuit. She has a number of feature film projects in development, including a ‘psychobiddy’ post-apocolyptic thriller with producer Catherine Pettman, which has been supported by Screen Tasmania and Screen Australia. She’s also a theatre maker and has directed three productions for Dark Mofo as a member of Radio Gothic, experimental horror radio plays written by Tasmanian playwrights in collaboration with composer/sound designer Heath Brown. Briony is also also a freelance script consultant and an arts writer specialising in film. For news follow her Facebook page or Twitter feed.