Charles Bracewell - committee

Charles Bracewell has worked in the arts and cultural industries for 20 years, beginning his career as an actor and then filmmaker, and later specialising in festival and event management.

He has held leadership roles for twelve festivals in Australia and New Zealand in the last fifteen years, most notably as Director of the NZ International Short Film Festival, Director of the New Zealand Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Executive Producer of the FEAST Festival, and Associate Festival Director for the Australian Festival for Young People.

He is the Manager Event Development for Events Tasmania, which delivers the State Government's Events Strategy and is the key driver of event tourism to Tasmania. Prior to arriving in Tasmania, he was Director of Young People and the Arts Australia, the nation's peak youth arts organisation.

He was the co-creator of 'I Can See Queerly Now', a South Australian emerging film-maker initiative in its seventh year, which provides training and production funding for a group of Queer filmmakers each year through the FEAST Festival. He has also been guest programmer for a range of smaller festivals, and mentors emerging film artists and filmmakers.

Charles is an award-winning filmmaker whose films have screened at over 55 festivals across 32 countries. His debut short film 'Siren' won the Audience Award at Sydney's prestigious My Queer Career competition, as well as audience awards at several other festivals and was a special selection for the 1997 Vancouver International Film Festival. 'Siren' was a rare short film to receive worldwide distribution on home video.

A two-time Creative NZ Screen Innovation Production Fund grant recipient, Charles has received grants from NZ On Air and the Australian Film Commission, and was awarded an Arts SA Established Artist grant to complete a first draft of a theatrical and cinematic story cycle on childhood sexual abuse. His hard-hitting doco-memoir 'Homecoming Queen' was included in career retrospectives at film festivals in Sydney and Toronto, and screened at festivals across New Zealand. Recent film projects include directing the short doco 'A Spoonful Of Desi', co-directing the short film 'How to Bury the Dead', and co-directing and co-producing 'Beauty & the Bear', an eight-part arts TV series. His new short film 'Gorrrgeous Vonni' is about to hit the film festival circuit, and is screening at this year's TasPride Film festival.

Bracewell's career as an actor has encompassed stage, television and film. Notable moments include being the first man to kiss another man on a network TV series in New Zealand, fulfilling a lifelong dream by playing bitchy hairdressers on three night-time soaps, and acting as hostess for four of New Zealand's major rock events to audiences of over 10,000. His work as a comedy writer for the screen has served him well as 'the man behind the woman' with his creation Miz Ima Starr, as well as during his seven-year stint hosting the popular New Zealand radio show 'In the Pink'. He has written and produced Starr's eight theatrical cabaret shows and numerous nightclub revues since 1992. She most recently stunned TV audiences with three memorable appearances on Channel 7's hit show 'Australia's Got Talent', and has appeared as songbird and wit on over 20 New Zealand and Australian TV shows including 'The Drum', 'Good Morning New Zealand', 'Nightline', '2 Newsnight' 'AM Adelaide', 'A Bit After Ten', and 'Havoc'. As an absolute career highlight, '60 Minutes' in New Zealand devoted a segment of the show to her journey through film, radio and live performance, describing Miz Ima Starr and her creator Charles Bracewell as a "Star on the Rise".