Cirrus@Austlit

Brisbane-based film-maker and playwright Jacqueline McKimmie is a graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) Playwrights Studio, and has also been an Australian Film Commission Project Manager. She appeared in the short film Human Touch (with Aaron Blabey, written and produced by Paul Cox), a film that screened at the Movie Convention on the Gold Coast in August 2004. Her achievements include several successful plays, television dramas and documentaries, feature and short films.

McKimmie's screen-writing career began as a student at the West Australian Institute of Technology between 1970 and 1973. Her first script was for an experimental film made by another student, when a Film and Television course was introduced as a component of their English Degree. After graduating she moved to Sydney to take up a position teaching English and Psychology to art students at St George Technical College. Some of the students wanted to make Super-8 films as part of the English component, hence McKimmie's gradual incorporation of film into her predominantly literary and drama folio.

Following her move to Brisbane in the late 1970s McKimmie's one act play The Kiss (q.v.) premiered at the Arts Theatre in 1978. It has since been staged many times throughout Australia (as well as being published by Playlab Press). In 1982 she wrote a telemovie, Madness for Two under the direction of Hugh Keays-Byrne, and the following year wrote, produced and directed the critically acclaimed short film, Stations, a 22 minute drama starring Noni Hazlehurst and Tim Burns. This short film won several Australian and International awards. 1983 also saw the debut of McKimmie's play 'Daring Romance'. It too had had several professional seasons. In 1986, she wrote and directed her first feature film Australian Dream, starring Noni Hazlehurst and Graeme Blundell (q.v.). In 1987, she wrote and directed the children's telemovie Top Enders (q.v.), which focused on the journey of two children, one black and one white, who head south of Darwin in search of a better world.

As a documentary-maker, McKimmie has won a number of awards for her two most highly acclaimed projects, No Problems and Breaking Through (q.v., 1990). The first centres on an elderly woman's romanticised memories of her childhood in Queensland; while the second is a powerful, dramatised account of child abuse. Her much acclaimed film, Waiting (q.v., 1990) was screened nationally and nominated for five Australian Film Industry (AFI) Awards. This was followed in 1994 by Gino (q.v.).

A strong advocate of Queensland filmmakers and film culture, McKimmie received a Centenary Award for her services to the industry. She has been involved in a number of workshops for the Indigenous Branch of the Australian Film Commission, and between 2003 and 2008 was Artistic Director of SP*RK (the AFC's national script workshop). During the same period she was engaged by the AFC as it's Brisbane-based Project Manager. A member of the Australian Writers' Guild and a past Queensland convenor for the AWG and Australian Screen Directors' Association, McKimmie has also been a board member of the Australian Film and Sound Archive and the Brisbane International Film Festival.