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Gillian Armstrong
Gillian May Armstrong (born 18 December 1950) is an Australian feature film and documentary director, best known for My Brilliant Career (1979), Mrs. Soffel (1984), High Tide (1987), The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992), and Little Women (1994). She is a Member of the Order of Australia. She has won many film awards, including an AFI Best Director Award, has been nominated for numerous others, and is the holder of several honorary doctorates.
Gillian May Armstrong was born on 18 December 1950 in Melbourne, Victoria. She was the middle child of a local real estate agent father and a primary school teacher mother who stopped outside work to rear a family.
She grew up in the suburb of Vermont, and attended Vermont High School. Her father was a frustrated photographer who wasn't allowed to follow his dreams professionally, yet continued his practice as an amateur. Armstrong reminisces that she grew up in a dark room, learning all about photography. When she first decided to go to art school, Armstrong didn't have a very firm grasp on what she wanted to do. Armstrong said that her parents were always very supportive of her hopes and dreams, which was not always true for women in the 1960s and 70s.
She studied general art in her first year and then majored in film, spending four years at Swinburne Technical College from 1968, which had recently established the beginnings of the Swinburne Film and Television School within the Graphic Art School. Originally she wanted to become set and costume designer, but ended up majoring in filmmaking after becoming interested in films. At the college, then an art school, she saw a range of artistic films, different from the commercial cinema and television she was used to.
After working for a year as an assistant editor in a commercial film house, she applied for a place on the one-year postgraduate directors course offered under a pilot training scheme at the newly-created national film school, the Australian Film and Television School (now AFTRS) in 1973. Only 12 students were selected, and they were "really tested as directors". Two films that she made there won several awards, and one was screened at an international student film festival. She went overseas with the film, and then travelled around for 18 months.
She started her studies before the Australian film industry had developed. She recalls that when new films were released, the actors sounded strange; for the first time their accents were Australian rather than American.
Following a string of short films and documentaries, Armstrong achieved her first directorial recognition through her first full-length film The Singer and the Dancer, shot on 16 mm film, which won the best narrative film award at the 1976 Sydney Film Festival.
Armstrong became a film director at the age of 27. During the time of the development of Australian Cinema Armstrong recalls in a Washington Post interview that tremendous tax breaks led to a frightful overproduction. Everybody was interested in doing deals and even stockbrokers were becoming directors. However, very few of them had the commitment to cinema that Armstrong and others had, and the films would be shown for a week or two, or not released at all. After Armstrong's second film My Brilliant Career, she had offers from Hollywood but quickly turned them all away, preferring to stay in Australia to make a deliberately small film called Starstruck. After the release of Starstruck, Armstrong went around giving interviews dressed in a large fuzzy blue sweater dress decorated with coloured beads, a black-and-white polka dot blouse, black tights and blue suede shoes all topped by a punk shag haircut.
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Gillian Armstrong
Gillian May Armstrong (born 18 December 1950) is an Australian feature film and documentary director, best known for My Brilliant Career (1979), Mrs. Soffel (1984), High Tide (1987), The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992), and Little Women (1994). She is a Member of the Order of Australia. She has won many film awards, including an AFI Best Director Award, has been nominated for numerous others, and is the holder of several honorary doctorates.
Gillian May Armstrong was born on 18 December 1950 in Melbourne, Victoria. She was the middle child of a local real estate agent father and a primary school teacher mother who stopped outside work to rear a family.
She grew up in the suburb of Vermont, and attended Vermont High School. Her father was a frustrated photographer who wasn't allowed to follow his dreams professionally, yet continued his practice as an amateur. Armstrong reminisces that she grew up in a dark room, learning all about photography. When she first decided to go to art school, Armstrong didn't have a very firm grasp on what she wanted to do. Armstrong said that her parents were always very supportive of her hopes and dreams, which was not always true for women in the 1960s and 70s.
She studied general art in her first year and then majored in film, spending four years at Swinburne Technical College from 1968, which had recently established the beginnings of the Swinburne Film and Television School within the Graphic Art School. Originally she wanted to become set and costume designer, but ended up majoring in filmmaking after becoming interested in films. At the college, then an art school, she saw a range of artistic films, different from the commercial cinema and television she was used to.
After working for a year as an assistant editor in a commercial film house, she applied for a place on the one-year postgraduate directors course offered under a pilot training scheme at the newly-created national film school, the Australian Film and Television School (now AFTRS) in 1973. Only 12 students were selected, and they were "really tested as directors". Two films that she made there won several awards, and one was screened at an international student film festival. She went overseas with the film, and then travelled around for 18 months.
She started her studies before the Australian film industry had developed. She recalls that when new films were released, the actors sounded strange; for the first time their accents were Australian rather than American.
Following a string of short films and documentaries, Armstrong achieved her first directorial recognition through her first full-length film The Singer and the Dancer, shot on 16 mm film, which won the best narrative film award at the 1976 Sydney Film Festival.
Armstrong became a film director at the age of 27. During the time of the development of Australian Cinema Armstrong recalls in a Washington Post interview that tremendous tax breaks led to a frightful overproduction. Everybody was interested in doing deals and even stockbrokers were becoming directors. However, very few of them had the commitment to cinema that Armstrong and others had, and the films would be shown for a week or two, or not released at all. After Armstrong's second film My Brilliant Career, she had offers from Hollywood but quickly turned them all away, preferring to stay in Australia to make a deliberately small film called Starstruck. After the release of Starstruck, Armstrong went around giving interviews dressed in a large fuzzy blue sweater dress decorated with coloured beads, a black-and-white polka dot blouse, black tights and blue suede shoes all topped by a punk shag haircut.
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