Meet the Creators of SWEET AS
Featuring Jub Clerc, Liz Kearney, Shantae Barnes-Cowan and Katie Flaxman
Friday 9 February
4:30pm AEST
Jub Clerc's debut feature film Sweet As, inspired by her own teenage experiences, is uplifting coming-of-age road movie about unconventional friendships, first crushes and finding who you are on the road less travelled.
In remote Pilbara country in Western Australia, troubled 16 year old Indigenous girl, Murra, finds herself abandoned after an explosive incident with her drug fuelled mother. On the cusp of being lost in the ‘Child Protection’ system, an unusual lifeline is thrown her way by her uncle Ian, the local cop, in the form of a unique Photo Safari. Before Murra knows it, she is careening down a dusty highway with a minibus full of ‘at risk’ teens and two charismatic team leaders.
Join cast & crew from the film as they share their stories, experiences and learnings from this exceptional film.
Featuring
Jub Clerc
Jub is a Nyul Nyul/Yawuru woman from the Kimberley in WA.
A WAAPA graduate, Jub spent many years in theatre before working on shows such as The Circuit1 & 2, Bran Nue Dae, Mad Bastards, Satellite Boy, Jandamarra’s War, Jasper Jones and Mystery Road - S1,
She has wrote and directed shorts Storytime, Music Men, Min Min Light and multiple ICS’s (Indigenous Community Stories) and directed Struggling Songlines, episodes of TV series The Heights and Turn Up the Volume
Jub also wrote/directed her chapter Abbreviation of the feature anthology The Turning.
Jub has reported/produced for, ‘Around the Traps’ and hosted ‘Mugu Kids’ for NITV and was a Soprano in Pecan Summer the worlds first Indigenous Opera
Her play ‘The Fever and the Fret’ debut at Yirra Yaakin won the prestigious 2017 ‘Kate Challis Award’.
Jub’s debut feature film ‘Sweet AS’ won the Blackmagic Design and Innovation award at MIFF 2022, the NETPAC award at TIFF 2022, the Crystal Bear in Generation KPlus at Berlinale 2023 plus many other international awards.
She is currently in post production on acclaimed political drama series Total Control S3 where she directed 3 episodes.
Liz Kearney
Liz Kearney is an Australian producer based in Melbourne and has produced numerous feature films, tv series and short films.
Liz produced her first feature These Final Hours in 2013. The film premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2013 and screened in Cannes as part of Directors’ Fortnight in 2014.
Alongside Robert Connolly and Maggie Miles, Liz produced the Australian film Paper Planes. The family feature was released by Village Roadshow and grossed almost $10m at the Australian box office. The film screened at numerous festivals including Toronto and Berlin and won the inaugural Cinefest Oz Film Prize in 2014.
In 2017 alongside producers Robert Connolly and John Harvey, Liz produced the comedy drama series The Warriors for the ABC. She also produced the 9-minute stop motion animated film Lost Property Office with cardboard sculptor Daniel Agdag. The short won Best Short Animation and Best Director at the 2017 Sydney Film and Best Short Animation at the 2018 AACTAs and was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2018.
Most recently Liz produced Robert Connolly’s feature film Blueback which premiered at TIFF and screened at Sundance and Jub Clerc’s debut feature Sweet As which screened at TIFF, winning the NETPAC Award and Berlin where it won the Golden Bear in the Generation Kplus section.
Liz is currently in post-production on the stop motion animated feature film Memoir of a Snail by Academy Award winning writer/ director Adam Elliot.
Katie Flaxman
Katie loves stories. She loves listening to them, reading them, watching them and crafting them. As a film student at university, she snuck into the tape-to-tape suite after hours for a project and her passion for picture-editing (and 90s post-rock) was born.
Cut to 20 years later and Katie has edited a number of critically acclaimed shorts, documentaries and feature films which have screened at some of the world’s most prestigious festivals, including Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, Tokyo, Toronto, Sydney and Melbourne International Film Festivals. Her television work, both scripted and factual, has screened across all Australian networks and also around the world on Netflix, Stan, Amazon and Paramount +.
More recently, Katie edited Jub Clerc’s debut feature film, Sweet As. After premiering at MIFF in August 2022, where it won the Blackmagic Award for Innovation, it picked up the NETPAC Award at TIFF (Toronto), followed by the Crystal Bear for Best Film (Generation K-Plus) at the Berlin Film Festival. It has screened at numerous festivals around the world and has been nominated for seven AACTA Awards, including best Editing in a Feature Film.
Since then, Katie has edited feature film The Appleton Ladies Potato Race for Paramount + and just completed post on a six-part television comedy, White Fever, premiering later this year on the ABC.
Shantae Barnes-Cowan
Shantae Barnes-Cowan (c. 2004) is an Australian actress. She is a Adnyamathanha woman who starred in Wyrmwood: Apocalypse, Sweet As and the TV series Firebite. Other roles include Total Control and Operation Buffalo. She is nominated this year AACTA Award for Best Lead Actress in Film for Jub Clerc’s debut feature film Sweet As.
Sweet As is a VicScreen supported production