Cirrus@Austlit

A screenwriter since 1978, when he graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS), Michael Brindley's credits include Prisoner, Punishment, Taurus Rising, Bellamy, Blue Heelers and Police Rescue. He was a staff script editor on the top-rating A Country Practice and went on to become the series' Story Producer (qq.v.). Brindley wrote the ABC mini-series Half A World Away, collaborated with Karin Altmann on the top-rating telemovie One Way Ticket., and was a writer/script and story editor for series one and two of the wrote the AFI award-winning drama Grass Roots. He was also later an ABC network executive supervising the MDA-Medical Defence Australia series (which won three AFI awards, including Best Television Drama). Brindley's feature film credits include also co-writing the award winning feature film, Shame, which was invited to many festivals, beginning with the New York Museum of Modern Art 'New Directors, New Films'. It went on to worldwide theatrical distribution and was remade as a telemovie for US Lifetime cable.

Michael Brindley's career has seen him work extensively as a script consultant and reader for all the Australian government film funding bodies as well as the New Zealand Film Commission. He was Head of the Australian Film Commission (q.v.) Script Office between 1987-8, and in 1993 was a consultant for the West Australia Film Council (now ScreenWest) on script assessment and script editing. In addition he has lectured at RMIT University (where he was a founding teacher in the Advanced Diploma In Professional Screenwriting), La Trobe University, VCA Film School and AFTRS. He devised and taught courses in Adaptation, Script Analysis and Feature Film Writing and has lectured in New Zealand for the NZ Film Commission New Writers Scheme. He was also a script advisor to the Australian Film Commission's (q.v., AFC) SP*RK program in 2004 and 05 (and a participant in 2008).

Brindley's insight into the craft of scriptwriting have seen him author a number of papers and guides, including 'What Is A One-page Synopsis?' (for Screen Australia) and 'The Screen Hub Guide to Script Format.' In 1996 he received the Hector Crawford Award for Script Editing from the Australian Writers' Guild (q.v., AWG).