Ground Breaker - Amy Gebhardt

After graduating from a Bachelor of Laws and Arts majoring in Film in 1998, Amy Gebhardt has become an award winning writer/director/cinematographer in both drama and documentary. In 2007 she graduated from her Masters in Directing at the Australian FilmTelevision and Radio School.

Amy has written and directed 6 short films which have won various awards including Best Direction at the Flickerfest International Short Film Awards, Special Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the Seattle International Film Festival and Best Student Production at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Committed to her work with actors, Amy advanced her skills in direction through a mentorship with Writer/Director Jane Campion in 2006. Amy has also directed documentary, feature EPK's, mini docs, and film clips for broadcast television. Her documentary credits include directing A Night at the Drive-In a 26 minute documentary for SBS Television.

Further to her directorial skills, Amy is an accomplished Cinematographer shooting over 15 short films, and multiple documentaries for broadcast. She has camera operated and focus pulled on many television commercials and three feature films. She loves to keep her hand in the technical aspects of the craft.

In 2005, Amy worked as director on the SBS cross-platform project My Space, creating broadcast and online content that explored personal Australian stories, winning the Silver Award for Best Website at the Promax Awards.

By combining her background in cinematography, performance and documentary, Amy is committed to telling stories that visually inspire and push notions of the human spirit. She is currently developing her first feature.

Ground Breaker Film - Look Sharp

Set in 1976 in a Melbourne housing commission home, LOOK SHARP is the story of Jo, a stills artist, who has spent the night with sharpie gang members Darren and Jason in order to document their brutal street world and sense of kinship. The story begins as they awake from a night of heavy drinking and sex. This one-scene short film looks at the constant shift of power between three individuals as they grapple with the omnipresent threat of violence and the impact of a camera. To what lengths will these characters go in the name of art? And where is the moral line in pushing a person to breaking point in order to photograph them?

Ground Breaker Questionnaire

How did you hear about HATCH?

Hatchfest is one of the few Festivals that my film school plucks out of the packed festival circuit to send its films. I heard that the festival is very well supported and rich in content.

What was your inspiration in making the film?

The story of LOOK SHARP was inspired by the art and lives of various female photographers including Nan Goldin, Diane Arbus and Carol Jerrems who all developed very intimate relationships with the people they photographed, even putting themselves at personal risk for their work. I was also fascinated by what lay beneath the violent subculture of Melbourne's "Sharpies", who always looked sharp but whose favorite pastime was gay bashing in steel capped boots. I think the clashing of these two worlds, a woman photographing gang machismo, resulted in an almost unbearable tension. The actors were very brave, denuded, and thoroughly committed throughout the making of the film.
Sustaining the energy within one temporal and physical space and to ask the audience to feel compassion for a seemingly hateful character were all huge challenges in making the film.

Who is your mentor?

Mother nature. And Jane Campion.

Why did you choose to pursue film?

European cinema initially attracted me to making films. I loved the stirring of the unconscious that filmmakers such as Fellini, Tarkovsky and Antonioni achieved in their work and the political perversion of Bunuel. I also loved early Hollywood cinema as a kid, film noir, Hitchcock and screwball comedy in particular. When I was studying law as a teenager and walked through the humanities plaza one day and saw all my friends mucking around with 16mm cameras. I was sooo jealous! and immediately enrolled in cinema studies where I became obsessed with motion photography. I shot all the graduating shorts and went on to work in cinematography on tvcs, documentaries and feature films. Getting to know the camera and the emotional implications of light was an amazing training ground for my work as a director. I have since studied a Masters in Directing at AFTRS and honed my approach to actors and character. Working in documentary has also made me continually fascinated in people's stories. Somewhere a coming together of all these elements can create a mystery that is able to tap into our emotions. What a great job prospect…