Phoebe Hart is principal of hartflicker, an energetic Australian-based video and film production company creating provocative, socially-aware documentaries and moving, experimental and visually-intriguing drama productions for the small and big screen. With courageous intent, hartflicker distributes these media products to local, national and international markets.

Since completing her film studies at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 1995, Phoebe Hart has worked extensively as a writer, producer and director of factual television and media. She has been involved in a diverse range of Australian television projects, including children’s program Totally Wild, Network Ten’s documentary unit, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Race Around the World and Fly TV. She co-directed a documentary series on the state of Australian higher education for the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) called Downunder Grads, which screened in March 2008. Phoebe also directed and co-wrote the ABC documentary Roller Derby Dolls on a group of women who play the rough-and-tumble sport of roller derby, which screened in a primetime slot in September 2008. In 2009 Phoebe was awarded her doctorate from QUT of which Orchids was a central element of her studies.

Bonnie applies her skills and creativity in the areas of film production and visual direction across a variety of media platforms. She holds a degree in Film and Television Production from QUT. Her work has been screened Australia-wide on free-to-air and cable television and festivals such as the Other Film Festival, Now Now, Golden Plains, Trasharama, Wild Spaces, Queensland New Filmmakers Awards and the Sydney Fish Market. Internationally, she has contributed to films screened at Exploding Cinema/Collision Festival (UK), Xpace2000 (Singapore), Hamilton Underground Film Festival (NZ), Lambtree Grove Project (UK), Odense Ser Rodst (Denmark). Bonnie has also toured extensively nationally and internationally as a high-energy avant-garde musician and performance artist. She has appeared as a part of the theatrical grindcore band Unaustralians, ecstatic music collective Sun of the Seventh Sister and internet syncopoop phenomenon Knicker Onasis.

Bonnie’s visual art practice spans painting, collage, digital imaging, graphic design, dressmaking and sculptural installation. She has exhibited in Australia and the UK. Bonnie’s textural aesthetic has influenced her 16mm and 8mm direct film work, whereby she has created a process of painting on to and manipulating the celluloid emulsion.

In June 2006, Bonnie and her artistic associate Nylstoch, co-founded the music and cinema laboratory Venting Gallery. Since its inception, Venting Gallery has extensively documented the underground Australian art scene and created an extensive audio, video and printed archive. As a continuation of this work, Venting Gallery has produced a series of 1000 films about experimental music in Australia titled Rituals of the Captured Moment.

Currently she has helped establish the Foundation for Contemporary Music & Culture Inc. - a non-profit organisation who supports and nurtures marginalised artists and those of divergent aesthetic.

“Initially, I treated working on Orchids: my intersex adventure as a form of hanging out with my sis, and doing a low budget doco gig, both of which I was quite familiar with.  It was easy to work on in a practical sense, but then afterwards I sometimes found myself in an emotional shit shower. In the end, I thought it was a great opportunity to publicly bust open the illusion of a binary gender mentality that still exists, and, with luck, the film will create a context for other intersex crew to appreciate their own form as it exists.

“The camerawork – I just did what we agreed on, what I was told, and then when I got sick of doing what I was told, I did what I felt like.  With the super 8 cinematography, I wanted to find ways of locating visual metaphors to illustrate certain situations in our lives.  We had many negotiations as to the degree of abstraction that was suitable for the film.  Really, I just wanted to offer another way for people to access the concepts presented by the rest of the film – allow them the ability to engage with the emotional symbols and their aesthetic intelligence.”

Vanessa has been working as an editor specialising in documentary for the past seven years. Her films have screened at festivals around the world including the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Hot Docs in Toronto, and the Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Edinburgh, St Kilda and Rome Film Festivals. In 2007 she won the Australian Film Institute (AFI) award for best documentary editing for Forbidden Lie$, which was released theatrically in Australia and the United States of America.

Vanessa is passionate about helping bring Australian stories to the screen, from intimate portraits, to political and historical examinations, and projects focused on social justice. Among her broadcast credits are Homemade History (SBS), which uncovered the hidden wealth of Super 8 home movies in Australian sheds and spare bedrooms; Making Babies (SBS) a two-part series exploring the new family ties that develop when egg and sperm donors maintain relationships with the families they help to create; 14 Storeys (ABC) a series of short documentary portraits made by public housing residents about their neighbours; Liberal Rule: the Politics that changed Australia an irreverent investigation of the way John Howard transformed Australian politics and society; and the recently completed Nothing Rhymes with Ngapartji (ABC), which follows Pitjantjatjara actor Trevor Jamieson as he takes his acclaimed theatre show Ngapartji Ngapartji to a remote Aboriginal community, and navigates the cultural sensitivity of performing a play about tragic events to an audience who were witnesses to those same events.

“I am very excited to be involved with Orchids: My Intersex Adventure, which brings a rare first-person perspective the hidden world of intersex. This hidden world is brought to us through the familiar prism of home movies, teen angst, and tangled family dynamics. Phoebe's positive spirit brings warmth and humour to a story with many bumps in the road.”

Simon completed a Fine Arts Degree in 2004 from The College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, majoring in Photomedia and Digital Illustration. His work spans print media illustration, music video design and direction, film and television animation and screenwriting. As a freelance illustrator, he has contributed to a diverse range of print publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, Men’s Style, Reader’s Digest, The Diplomat and Dolly. Simon’s production company F Block, has directed, designed and animated music videos for Australian artists such as Bob Evans (Hand Me Downs), Guy Sebastian (Cover on my Heart) and Old Man River (La). In 2006, Simon received an AFI nomination for Visual Effects for his work as a key animator and animation designer on the feature film documentary, Unfolding Florence, directed by Gillian Armstrong.

Biddy Connor is a composer and musician with experience as a vocalist, violist, guitarist and keyboard player. For the first seven years of her music career she sang and wrote songs with a cappella group Nude Rain (1989-1996), who toured Australia and independently released a CD, Drown. In 1995 Biddy completed a Bachelor of Music Performance as a vocalist, from the Victorian College of the Arts, Improvisation Stream.

In 2002 she worked as a song-writing mentor on the BigHart project, Knot at Home, telecast on SBS in 2006 and 2007. Biddy went on to complete a Masters in Screen Composition at AFTRS in 2005. Biddy was nominated for Best Music for a Documentary at the 2005 APRA-AGSC Screen Music Awards for her music in Switch on the Night. At the 2006 Park City Film Music Festival, USA, Biddy received a Gold Medal for Excellence for her work on the short film Danya as well as a Silver Medal for her music in The First Thing I Remember.

Biddy has continued to work as a musician with bands such as Laura Jean, Oliver Mann, Ross McLennan and Magic Silver White. In 2007 she performed on the puppet show Dr Egg and the Man with No Ear at the Sydney Opera House, The Arts Centre Melbourne and at the Awesome Festival in Perth. She has also worked as a session violist for many artists including Tim Finn, Blue King Brown, Jen Cloher, Ned Collette and Grand Salvo. Biddy will be releasing her debut album, Sailor Days in 2010, funded by Victoria Rocks an initiative of Arts Victoria.

"I was impressed by the bravery and rawness Phoebe and Bonnie showed in approaching this very personal subject, and I felt I should honour and reflect that in the theme music. Using live vocals and strings seemed to capture that emotion in an appropriate way."

Davin Patterson is a soundtrack composer for features, documentaries, short films and television commercials. He began his career in music while studying jazz piano at the Conservatorium of Music and discovered his passion for screen composing while completing his Bachelor of Arts in Film and Television Production at QUT.

Davin combines his skills as a composer with techniques as a qualified sound designer, to produce distinctive soundtracks. He has composed feature film scores for The Turner Affair, Rapid Fear and Endurance Island as well as feature length documentaries Wings to Fly (SBS 2008) Kingdom of the Jabiru and The Blue Bike. Davin’s television work includes writing music for the 13-part series, Medicine Woman, an Australia/Canada co-production screened on TV networks in both Canada and the USA. He has also created the scores for the documentary, The Chant of the Scrub Turkey, ABC 2006, three-part documentary series, Unlikely Travellers (ABC 2007) and more than a dozen short films. Davin received an AFI nomination in 2005 for his work on the short film Cool, and in 2006 won Best Score at Action Fest and Best Sound Design at the Queensland Short Film Festival, for his work on the film Heads Up.

“Orchids: My Intersex Adventure is a delicate, handmade film with a whimsical touch and I wanted the music to share these qualities. One of the most important aspects in composing the Orchids’ soundtrack was finding a balance between moments when the music played an active part in the narrative, and those when it provided a background to the unfolding scenes.

“Phoebe's vision for the soundtrack was that it should reflect the film's personal stories, underscore the many moments of humour, and not sound overly-produced. I drew on a simple, organic palette of vintage keyboards, mallet instruments and guitars to complement the lighter moods, and explored unusual time signatures and production techniques in creating darker effects where necessary.”

John Willsteed was born in Brisbane in the 50s. He abandoned his architectural studies in 1976 to pursue a life in music but has never been able to choose between bass and guitar. He has played with numerous iconic Australian independent bands. He toured the world through the late 80s with The Go-Betweens, still performs with The Apartments and recently recorded and performed with Ed Kuepper. He is a graduate of AFTRS and has won national and international awards for his film and television sound work including three AFI awards. He is a sound editor and composer for all forms of media, and is currently a director of LCR Film Sound – a sound post facility in Brisbane. His career in higher education began in 2000 and was formalised by graduating from Griffith University in 2008. He is now a lecturer in sound design in the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT, where he has recently embarked on his PhD.

“I want us to help paint the landscape of feelings that Phoebe has been traveling: the fear of revealing inner truths, the desire to be understood and loved without condition and the need to belong within family and community.”

Surrounded by radios of all shapes and sizes and with hours spent in front of the television, Tfer Newsome began her love affair with all things audio visual at an early age. Firstly, she focused her full attention on sound at QUT, while studying Film and Television for her Bachelor of Arts. In 2002 Tfer graduated from AFTRS with a Masters in Sound Editing, where she received the Sound Firm Award as well as the Critic Circle Award for Best Sound Design. Since then, she has worked as a freelance location sound recordist and sound editor, on a wide range of projects such as games, websites, video installations, documentaries, short films and features. Some of her credits include; foley editor on the 26 episode children’s television series, The Adventures of K9 and feature film Beauty and the Beast; sound editor for ABC documentaries, World Champion Santa and 6FT Hick: Notes from the Underground. She established LCR Film Sound Pty Ltd in 2009 with business partner John Willsteed and enjoys the challenges of working as both Sound Editor and Company Director.

“Creating the sound design for Orchids: My Intersex Adventure is a unique opportunity to design a sonic journey as special and diverse as the film itself. The different facets of the film, allow for a variety of approaches to enhancing the journey. Designing a special world for the animated characters was the most exciting. The biggest goal for me is to manage the temporal space the film takes place in, and create an engaging soundscape helping the audience join Phoebe on her journey.”

Faramarz is an Australian-Iranian filmmaker and lecturer in documentary and film production at Griffith University. He has worked across many roles in the documentary industry since graduating from the Queensland College of Art, Bachelor of Screen Production. His focus on directing, mixed with a strong background in cinematography, has helped shape his insightful, observational style of filmmaking. His specialist cross-cultural knowledge allows him to shape films of religious, cultural, and social sensitivity. Faramarz’s films reflect the fundamental essence of humanity through intimate observation while avoiding controversy or inflaming contentious issues. His directorial credits include Fahimeh’s Story, which gained Independent Spirit Award 2004 Lexus IF Awards and an AFI nomination, and Donkey in Lahore, which was part of the Official Competition at the 2007 International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam and 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.

“When I first learned about Phoebe’s story, I knew that it was important that the world learn about more about intersex and about Phoebe herself. It has been a privilege to be involved in the process of helping Phoebe to bring the many threads of this project together into the tapestry that is Orchids: My Intersex Adventure.”

Bronwyn balances her work in television, public relations, photography and teaching, with her hectic life as a mum. After graduating from QUT with a film and television degree in 1998, she worked in local production at Channel Seven Brisbane on programs such as The Great South East and Creek to Coast. Bronwyn’s passion to support local filmmakers, inspired her to develop and produce the half hour TV show Briz-Iz, telecast on Channel Seven Brisbane in 2000, showcasing short documentaries from emerging Brisbane filmmakers. She was selected as a director for the SBS guerilla style documentary series, 24 Hours, and created her film, When Bronwyn Met Yangdzom, telecast on Eat Carpet 2001. Since then she has worked in Australian and British reality TV, Queensland government video production and public relations, freelance corporate production and teaching at QUT.

“I loved the diversity of my work with Phoebe. From finding office space to being the driver of a second unit car filming her and Bonnie - no two days were the same on Orchids: My Intersex Adventure. Workshopping ideas with Phoebe was a delight. Her ability to be open to feedback as well as staying true to her vision, was a tremendous learning experience for me.”

Producer & Director
Phoebe Hart

Camera
Bonnie Hart and Phoebe Hart

Super 8 Cinematographer
Bonnie Hart

Editor
Vanessa Milton

Animation
Simon Rippingale

Theme music
Biddy Connor

Composer
Davin Patterson

Sound designers
Tfer Newsome and John Willsteed

Producer consultant
Faramarz K-Rahber

Production coordinator
Bronwyn Roy

Featuring
Phoebe Hart
Bonnie Hart
James Davidson
Dennis Hart
Marie Hart
Aleyshia Manakahae
Tony Briffa
Andie Hider
Sophie Hart
Chris Somers
Fay Davidson

Additional camera
James Davidson
Naomi Kumé
Craig Lucas
Dan Macarthur
Faramarz K-Rahber

Still images
Bonnie Hart
Marie and Dennis Hart
Phoebe Hart
Jaynie Langford
Aleyshia Manakahae
Graham Meltzer

Queensland Health
Dan Stojanovich
Chris Somers

Publicity stills
Bronwyn Roy

Production assistants
Kayla Howard
Naomi Kumé
Sarah Vertegaal

Animation designers
Simon Rippingale
Nina Gibbs

Transcription
Angela Hibbard
Melissa McLeary

Sound mixer
David White at LCR Film Sound

Online
Matt Bennett

Colourist
Warren Eagles

Production accountant
Vickie Gest

Insurance
HW Wood Australia Pty. Ltd.

Legals
Verge Whitford & Co.

Extra special thanks
Queensland University of Technology for the early development of Orchids
Helen Yeates
Associate Professor Geoff Portmann
Dr Vivienne Muller

PRODUCED IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE
AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
ABC Commissioning Editor
Amanda Duthie

FINANCED WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF SCREEN AUSTRALIA
Screen Australia Creative Consultant
Karin Altmann

FINANCED BY SCREEN QUEENSLAND PRODUCED BY
hartflicker
Copyright hartflicker and Screen Queensland 2010