Series 1 is 7 x 25 minute documentaries,
TRAILER: https://vimeo.com/915793213?share=copy
Seven different Australian photographers, each with a significant body of work and each with a different photographic style:
1/ PONCH HAWKES
· - feminist photographer
A Melburnian, Ponch’s work has explored themes to do with women, sport (including circus), female bodies, relationships and identity. Starting out in the Pram Factory and early Circus Oz period, Ponch photographed circus performers, then extended out to portrayals of artists, feminists, sportspeople and others. Her first exhibited work was Our Mums and Us, featuring her female friends and their mothers, amongst them writer Helen Garner. More recent projects such as Flesh after 50 / 500 Strong exhibitions have explored the ageing female body. Hawkes’ extensive career is considered an influential part of the Australian Feminist art movement.
Nominee at 2026 Miami Women Film Festival, USA
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for 2025 International Portrait Film Festival, Bulgaria
Official Selection for 2025 Toronto Women Film Festival, Canada
Official Selection at 2025 International Images Film Festival for Women, Zimbabwe
Official Selection at 2026 Worldwide Women’s Film Festival, USA
Official Selection at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
2/ JOHN STREET
· - formerly a commercial photographer, now an art photographer
Born in the UK John spent the first 15 years of his life in and out of different orphanages. He remembers light being an important thing to him as he lay in fields as a child, looking up at the sky. John subsequently became a merchant seaman, then returned to London in the swinging 60s and became a commercial photographer. He migrated to Australia and continued this work, being acclaimed as a very exacting food photographer. At a later stage John swapped to an ultra large format camera to compose unique, one-off art photographs, which he describes as ‘slow photography’. At the age of 90 he has now sold his large camera but continues to make photographs that are more of a combination of art and photography – ‘painting with light’.
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for the 2025 Symbiotic Film Festival, Ukraine
3/ JACQUELINE MITELMAN
· - portrait photographer
Born in Scotland and migrating to Australia as a child, Jacqueline has lived and worked in Melbourne apart from a period living in France. She has worked as a freelance photographer focusing primarily on portraiture. A wide range of private commissions has resulted in an extensive collection of portraits of culturally significant Australians, described as “fusing the intensity of the moment with stillness of icons” (Dr Vivien Gaston). Jacqueline was awarded the National Photographic Portrait Prize in 2011. Her works are held in public institutions and private collections in Australia and internationally.
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Nominee at 2026 Miami Women Film Festival, USA
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for 2023 International Portrait Film Festival, Bulgaria
Official Selection at 2026 Worldwide Women’s Film Festival, USA
4/ MEREDITH O'SHEA
· - photojournalist
Born into a working class family in Melbourne, Meredith’s father chose to move them to very outer suburban greenery and freedom. She preferred horse-riding to school, but became interested in film and photography. She was scooped up by THE AGE as soon as they saw her folio, and they have been her main employer for the last 2 decades. She creates most of her own story concepts for the newspaper and believes her working class background allows her to relate more easily to her subjects - she covers difficult issues and engages with her subjects at a profound level of intimacy, revealing hauntingly beautiful photographs of her subjects at their most vulnerable. And then there are the beautiful photos of her children, which she started taking during COVID…
Nominee for the 2025 Toronto Women Film Festival, Canada
Nominee at 2026 Miami Women Film Festival, USA
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for 2025 International Portrait Film Festival, Bulgaria
Official Selection at 2025 International Images Film Festival for Women, Zimbabwe
5/ RICKY MAYNARD
· - an Indigenous documentary photographer
An Indigenous Tasmanian photographer, Ricky started as a darkroom technician at the age of 16.
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Winner - Best International Photography Documentary Short
at 2024 Unban Mediamakers Film Festival, USA
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
6/ EMMANUEL SANTOS
· - art and documentary photographer.
Born on an island in the Philippines, Emmanuel was a photographer for the UN when he met and married an Australian. He migrated to Australia, finding an affinity in East St Kilda with the Orthodox Jewish community (about whom he authored the book Observances). He subsequently produced another book photographing the Jewish diaspora throughout the world (Israel; one land, one people, one dream). He has had his art photography exhibited throughout the world,and considers photography to be ‘learning the language of light”.
Audience Choice Award Honourable Mention at 2025 YoFiFest, USA
Finalist in Documentary Short Film at 2025 Richmond International F/F, USA
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for the 2025 Symbiotic Film Festival, Ukraine
7/ ASHLEY GILBERTSON
· - photojournalist & war photojournalist
Born In Melbourne, Australia, Ashley now lives and works in New York. In his teens Ashley started photographing his skateboarding friends. He had a good eye and was subsequently mentored by Emmanuel Santos (above), becoming very involved in filming Kosovar refugees in Australia – he thanks John Howard for starting his career by making him so angry about the refugee issue!
Ashley headed overseas to film refugees in other parts of the world and ended up in the Kurdish enclave of northern Iraq just before the Iraq war started. When the war began he became embedded with US marines, eventually publishing a book of his time there called Whiskey Tango Foxtrot:
A Photographer’s Chronicle of the Iraq War. During his time there a marine assisting him was shot in the head directly in front of him and he had to be flown back to the US with PTSD. In the US he subsequently made another emotional book– Bedrooms of the Fallen - using photographs of the bedrooms left behind by 40 fallen soldiers.
Since this time he has photographed many subjects for the New York Times, and has recently been back in Melbourne for the launch of his exhibition at NGV about the COVID-period in New York, titled Requiem to New York.
Outstanding Achievement Award for Documentary Short at 2025 Best Shorts Competition
& Award of Excellence: Liberation/Social Justice/Protest at 2025 Best Shorts Competition
Outstanding Achievement Award for Documentary Short at 2025 Accolade Global
Award of Excellence at 2025 Global Shorts awards, USA
Nominated for Best Documentary for the 2025 Festival of Cinema NYC
Nominated for Best Documentary for the 2025 New York Cinefest
Finalist at 2025 Jackson Doc Fest, USA
Semi-finalist at 2026 Spotlight on Academics Film Festival, Canada
Official Selection at 2024 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Australia
Official Selection for the 2025 Symbiotic Film Festival, Ukraine
Official Selection for 2025 Athens Festival Film, Greece
Official Selection at 2025 Richmond International Film Festival, USA
CREATIVE TEAM
Producer/ Director – Fiona Cochrane
Editor – Chris Cochrane-Friedrich
Cinematographer –Mark Street
Sound – David Muir
Distributed by Ronin Films - https://www.roninfilms.com.au/video/0/0/18844.html?words=%22The+Language+of+Light%22&searchby=details
Screening on SBS-on-Demand