Shark Island

is the CEO of Shark Island Productions. He is an award winning documentary filmmaker and his director and producer credits include The Oasis, In The Company of Actors, Alone Across Australia and Woodstock for Capitalists. These films have all screened on ABC Television, a variety of television networks around the world and at over 100 international film festivals.

He is currently producing and directing a feature documentary titled The Drought, about the impact of drought on rural communities. He also has two short fiction films in production, due for release in early 2009.

He is Chair of the Shark Island Foundation and the Shark Island Documentary Fund, which supports Australian documentary filmmakers and the local industry.

In addition, he is the founder and Chair of Documentary Australia Foundation, a new philanthropic initiative involving documentary filmmakers, philanthropic foundations and charitable organisations in Australia.

He is currently the Chairman of The Caledonia Foundation, a private foundation focusing on the education, training and welfare of disadvantaged young Australians. He was the founding Managing Director of Caledonia Investments from 1992 to 2003, and is currently a Director of the Caledonia Investments Group.

Ian is Chairman of the Sydney Theatre Company and the STC Foundation. He is also a Member of the Advisory Council of the Centre for Social Impact. He has been a Member of the Advisory Board of The Salvation Army, Chair of the Salvation Army Education Foundation and Investment Board and a Director of the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA).

He has a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from IMD Switzerland and a BA in Accounting from the Australian National University.

Sally Fryer is Editor/Associate Producer at Shark Island Productions and a Director of the Shark Island Documentary Fund. She has cut over 100 documentaries during her career. She is currently working on Children of the Oasis (working title) -- a hard hitting feature documentary scheduled for release in early 2008. Filmed over two years, The Shelter follows the lives of a group of severely disadvantaged homeless kids who live on the streets of inner Sydney. She recently completed In the Company of Actors - a feature documentary in which a company of actors reveal the magic and struggle of creating world class theatre - the film's world premiere will be at the Sydney Film Festival 2007.

Prior to this she had 20 years experience as a freelance documentary film editor both in London and Sydney. She worked principally for the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK and for the ABC and SBS since her arrival in Australia. She has worked on a wide range of high quality documentaries from politics to food, dance to medicine, anthropology to sexuality, and with some of the industry’s most experienced directors as well as with ‘first timers’, enjoying the challenges of both.

Sally was a finalist for the Dendy Awards Best Documentary Category 2005 with Political Football, was the editor of Alone Across Australia which has now won over 25 international awards and screened at over 60 international film festivals, and Woodstock for Capitalists which won several awards including a Cine Golden Eagle Award. She was nominated for an AFI Award for Editing of The Original Mermaid in 2003 which went on to win the Film Critics Award for Best Documentary. Her other Australian credits include Dust to Dust, Dope - A Battle for the Soul of Sport, Drama School, and The Track. In 1995 she was Senior Editor on Watergate for Brook Lapping in London, which won the International Emmy for Best Documentary Series.

She is married and is the very proud mother of 2 beautiful young boys, Louie and Thommo and a dog called Mullet.

Sascha Ettinger Epstein is currently working as a Co-Director and Cinematographer on a documentary, titled The Oasis, about "street kids" for Shark Island Productions. She is a passionate documentary maker and magazine feature writer with a taste for edgy stories. Her first documentary Painting with Light in a Dark World about eccentric Kings Cross street photographer Peter Darren Moyle won many awards including best short documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival 2003, the AFI for best Direction in a Documentary, an IF Award and an ATOM Award and was a finalist in the 2003 Dendy Awards. Thereafter she completed a Masters in Documentary Direction at AFTRS where she made Sentences , a short documentary about an art program within maximum security at Long Bay Gaol which played at Flickerfest 2005, St Kilda Film Festival 2005 and Change of Heart about the mystique of the human heart and heart transplantation which is also a finalist in the Sydney Film Festival Dendy Awards 2005. Having finished film school she directed a film about the 'Croc Fest' for indigenous youth from remote communities in the Northern Territory and was then selected to represent Oceania in a documentary-making competition in Belgium. Now back in Australia she is developing projects, writing regularly for Studio Magazines and tutoring cultural studies at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Susan MacKinnon

Susan is a Consulting Producer with Shark Island Productions, and her credits include the recently completed feature, In The Company Of Actors. She is an Executive Officer and a Director of Shark Island's philanthropic initiative Documentary Australia Foundation, established to create a new funding model from private grants to the documentary industry.

She is currently Executive Producer on a number of films including the animated feature documentary Global Haywire directed by Oscar winning Bruce Petty and the musical feature ‘4'.

From 1998 to 2005 Susan was the Documentary Investment Manager at the Film Finance Corporation Australia (FFC), where she assisted filmmakers in negotiating finances for their documentaries. During this time Susan financed over 400 productions and helped internationalise the Australian documentary industry.

Susan has worked as an independent producer for many years. She won many awards and gained international acclaim for her documentaries. Her very popular short drama, Fetch, screened at over fifty world festivals, including Official Competition at Cannes. Her successful documentaries include – Eternity; Loaded- The Gun Lovers; You Must Remember This; Dinner for Six; Somewhere Between Light and Reflection; and Men and Their Sheds.

Susan is a board member for the South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC) and the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

Mitzi Goldman is an Executive Officer and Director of Shark Island’s philanthropic initiative, the Documentary Australia Foundation. She is a Senior Academic and Head of the Documentary Department at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). She has taught documentary production for many years in New York, USA, Murdoch University in Perth Western Australia, Sydney College of Fine Arts, University of Western Sydney and AFTRS.

Mitzi is currently on the Board of Directors of the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC). She has also been a board member of the Film and Television Institute in Western Australia and has served as a jury member of film festivals in Australia, in Iran for the Tehran International Short Film Festival and in China for the Guangzhou Documentary Film Festival.

Mitzi regularly assesses documentary projects for government funding bodies and organizes monthly seminars, screenings and documentary events for Ozdox – the Australian Documentary Forum of which she is a founding member and co-ordinator. She has written, produced, edited and directed documentaries for over 20 years and has a wealth of experience in many aspects of filmmaking and teaching. Her films have been screened around the world in festivals in Germany, South Africa, the UK, France, Spain, the USA and of course her home, Australia. Mitzi's documentaries deal with social issues, personal history and cultural heritage and have received nominations at Australia’s AFI Awards, sold to ABC TV, Channel 4 (UK), SBS TV and won awards, including an ATOM award for Best Social Issues Documentary. Her credits include Snakes And Ladders, Things I Call Mine, Many Homes, Many Names, Hatred, Ports Of Destiny, Parra and Chinese Take Away. She currently has a feature documentary in post production, provisionally titled Moving the Mine, which is an international co-production with ARTE, ITVS and SBS to be released 2008.

Mitzi Goldman holds a BA from the University of Sydney majoring in Fine Arts and Philosophy and a PhD from the University of Western Sydney.

Mary Macrae is the Shark Island Productions Production Manager and Office Manager. She was the Production Assistant for the feature documentary In The Company of Actors. Mary was a recipient of the Shark Island Productions Documentary Scholarship in 2006.

Prior to joining Shark Island Mary freelanced as a Stage and Production Manager in Sydney. She has worked regularly with Sydney Theatre Company, Company B Belvoir: Griffin Theatre Company, Performing Lines, Force Majeure, Sydney Festival, Ten Days on the Island – Tasmanian State Festival, Pact Youth Theatre and was a Production Coordinator for the Olympic and Paralympic Arts Festivals. Mary has lectured in Stage Management for the NIDA Open Program, the University of Western Sydney and the Wesley Institute.