Martha Ansara

Martha Ansara is a US-born Australian documentary filmmaker, writer, oral historian, and educator. Ansara was one of the first women in Australia to work as a cinematographer, and a founding member and/or convenor of the Sydney Women's Film Group in the early 1970s, the Film and Broadcast Industries Oral History Group, the Archive Forum (which lobbied for the establishment of the National Film and Sound Archive as a statutory body), and of Ozdox, the Australian Documentary Forum.

Early life and education Martha Ansara was born in the United States, where her father was a leading figure in the Syrian-Lebanese community and her mother an educator specialising in dyslexia. She started making films with other young filmmakers through the co-operative, but at that time professional cinematography was dominated by men and it was difficult to get work. However, in 1975 she was admitted as a student in the first three-year full-time course of the Australian Film and Television School (now AFTRS),

She also worked extensively as an assessor of projects for government film bodies and was involved in promoting the development of women's filmmaking through the Sydney Women's Film Group (SWFG), established in 1973, along with Jeni Thornley.

In the 1970s, Ansara formed many of the relationships with filmmakers and activists which she was to sustain in the following decades. She was involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement and joined the Association for International Disarmament and Co-operation, which became People for Nuclear Disarmament (PND). With the support of that organisation, she later made one of the first documentaries to be shot by Westerners in Vietnam, Changing the Needle. (1982) with peace activist Mavis Robertson and filmmaker Dasha Ross. She subsequently worked with PND as an organizer of the Pacific Peacemaker project She was a foundation member of the Rank and File Movement within the union which came to power briefly in the late 1980s.

In 1976 Ansara was introduced to the realities of Aboriginal Australians through community activist and singer Essie Coffey. She subsequently photographed Coffey's film My Survival as an Aboriginal (1979), which she co-produced with Coffey My Survival as an Aboriginal was later selected for restoration by Australia's National Film and Sound Archive.

In 1978, Ansara made Secret Storm, about a young woman who questions her role as mother.

In 1983, Ansara photographed Lousy Little Sixpence, a documentary about the Stolen Generations made by Alec Morgan, Aboriginal media pioneer Lester Bostock and his brother, Gerry Bostock. She also worked in Western Australia with Aboriginal activist Robert Bropho to photograph Munda Nyuringu and Always Was, Always Will Be (1989), a documentary on the Swan Brewery Dispute, which she and Bropho made together. with support from a Creative Arts Fellowship at the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University.

In 1988 she produced the anti-nuclear feature film The Pursuit of Happiness (1987) which she directed. The finance for this film was raised largely from private sources, including the proceeds of the sale of the Victoria Cross won at Gallipoli by Hugo Throssell and donated to the project by his son, diplomat and writer Ric Throssell, the father of Karen Throssell. Jeni Thornley, interviewing Ansara about the film in February 1988, described it as "about so much: motherhood, war, capitalism, change, values, how to live one's life, and it's also about women's economic independence from men. There you've got the metaphor of marriage, the US-Australia alliance..."

Ansara was a founding convenor of the Film and Broadcast Industries Oral History Group ), which was founded in April 1991 "as an independent body in response to the growing concerns of oral historians and Australian filmmakers that the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) was no longer doing enough to encourage the recording and dissemination of the oral histories of film and broadcast industry veterans". The members of this group included film historian Graham Shirley and screenwriter-producer Joan Long. The group was associated with the NFSA.

In this period Ansara gradually stopped working as a cinematographer and increasingly began teaching film, including as a lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney.

In 1999, she attended the Créteil International Women's Film Festival, where her films were screened in a tribute to Australian Women's Cinema.

2000s In 2002, Ansara produced the documentary Ordinary People, directed by Jennifer Rutherford and narrated by Tara Morice, which follows One Nation candidate Colene Hughes over two years and two elections.

Also around 2003, she was a founding member of the Archive Forum, which lobbied for the establishment of the National Film and Sound Archive as a statutory body, a goal finally accomplished in 2008.

In 2008 Ansara, as a member of the Australian Cinematographers Society, was asked to work with the ACS on a photographic history of cinematography in Australia. This project, significantly relying on oral history, became the book, The Shadowcatchers: A history of cinematography in Australia. Upon its launch, Ansara wrote "For me, The Shadowcatchers is, among other things, a tribute to the importance of the NFSA to our national heritage – to our understanding of the past".

Also in 2005, she produced the documentary I Remember 1948, directed by Fadia Abboud. Screened on SBS television and in both Arabic and English, the film features four Palestinian elders who give eye-witness accounts of the tumultuous days of the Nakba, the catastrophe of May 15th, 1948.

Ansara retired from filmmaking, after assisting Robynne Murphy in producing the 2020 documentaryWomen of Steel about the Wollongong Jobs for Women Campaign.

Memberships and other roles Ansara is a full member of the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS).

She is a life member of the Australian Directors Guild

In 1987, Ansara was awarded the Australian Film Institute's Byron Kennedy Award This award is given "for outstanding creative enterprise within the film and television industries... to an individual or organization whose work embodies the qualities of [producer] Byron Kennedy: innovation, vision and the relentless pursuit of excellence".

Ansara was inducted into the ACS Hall of Fame in 2015.

Personal life Ansara is the mother of three children, including Lee Tillam, Matthew Kay and Australian actor Alice Ansara.

Selected filmography 1973 Film for Discussion (drama documentary) (director, producer) 1979 Child Welfare (documentary) (cinematographer) 1979 My Survival as an Aboriginal (documentary) (cinematographer, co-producer) 1980 Climbers (dance drama) (cinematographer) 1980 Age Before Beauty (documentary) (cinematographer) 1981 Flamingo Park (documentary) (cinematographer) 1982 Changing the Needle (documentary) (co-director/producer, cinematographer) 1985 Taking a Look (short drama) (cinematographer) 1985 Rocking the Foundations (documentary) (cinematographer) 1988 The Pursuit of Happiness (feature drama) (director, producer) 2002 Ordinary People (documentary) (producer)

Selected publications Always Was, Always Will Be: The sacred grounds of the Waugal, Kings Park, Perth W.A.: the Old Swan Brewery dispute (1989), Balmain, NSW, Fringe Dwellers of the Swan Valley, / 0-7316-7571-1 The Shadowcatchers: A history of cinematography in Australia (2012), North Sydney, Austcine,

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