Blue Movies: Sex and Sexuality on Screen

Iranian-American filmmaker Desiree Akhavan is the writer/director/star of Appropriate Behavior, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

She is also the co-creator and star of the award-winning web series The Slope, a comedy that follows a pair of superficial, homophobic lesbians in love.

Desiree was featured as one of Filmmaker magazine’s ‘25 New Faces of Independent Film’ and will appear on the next season of Girls. She has a BA from Smith College and an MFA from NYU’s Grad Film Program.

Barbara Creed is Professor of Screen Studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Her areas of research cover feminist and psychoanalytic theory, the cinema of human rights and film and the animal.

Her books include: The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 1993), now in its 6th edition; Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny (MUP, 2005) and Darwin’s Screens: Evolutionary Aesthetics, Time and Sexual Display in the Cinema (MUP, 2009).

Barbara is an active figure in the film community as speaker and writer. She has served on the Boards of Writers Week, the Melbourne International Film Festival and the VCA School of Film and Television. She is a member of the Academy of the Humanities.

Joe Swanberg is an American independent filmmaker and actor. His films include Happy Christmas and Drinking Buddies.

Entering the film industry aged 17, Stephan became a director at age 26 with the Cannes 1993 entrant Frauds, starring Phil Collins and Hugo Weaving. He has since directed films including The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Welcome to Woop Woop.

His 2nd feature was written in 14 days en route to Cannes. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) became one of the most successful Aussie films of all time, gathering an Oscar, BAFTA, AFI Writers Guild and Golden Globe awards.

After making the black comedy Welcome to Woop Woop (1996) and the thriller Eye of the Beholder (1999) he accidently skied off the French Alps, breaking his pelvis, legs and back.

After 4 years of recuperation, Stephan returned with Priscilla The Musical and Easy Virtue (2008). He completed his first Aussie movie in 17 years, A Few Best Men, starring Twilight’s Xavier Samuels and Olivia Newton John, and is currently shooting the feature Rio I Love You – the follow up to the hugely successful PARIS, je t’aime in Brazil.

Clem Bastow's debut nonfiction book Late Bloomer was published in July 2021. Her writing appears regularly in The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Big Issue. She co-wrote and co-presented the 2017 ABC podcast Behind The Belt, a documentary "deep dive" into professional wrestling, and in 2018 she co-produced the first wrestling death match to be held on Tasmanian soil, Night Massacre, for Dark Mofo. She holds a Master of Screenwriting from University of Melbourne/VCA, teaches screenwriting at UoM and is currently undertaking a PhD in action cinema and screenwriting at RMIT University. She lives and works on Wurundjeri land with her dog, Milly.

Acclaimed writer/director Ana Kokkinos’ career spans film and TV.

Ana’s latest feature film Blessed (2009) premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival and was selected for Main Competition at San Sebastian (where it won the Jury prize for Best Screenplay). Blessed was in Official Selection at the Toronto, London, Giffoni and Palm Springs International Film Festivals.

Ana’s first full-length feature Head On was selected for Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. Her other films include The Book of Revelation and Only the Brave. She’s also directed episodes of ‘The Secret Life of Us* and 'Eugenie Sandler PI’, which won an AFI Award for Best Children’s TV Drama.

Ana is currently a board member of Film Victoria. She teaches directing at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School where she began as an industry mentor in 2007. In 2010 Ana was honoured at the Seattle International Film Festival as an emerging master filmmaker.