From left to right: Felicity Wilkinson, Karina Libbey, Kim Munro, Lee-Ann Woon, Marisa Marsionis.
The Natalie Miller Fellowship has announced five recipients of its inaugural NMF Catalyst grants.
Karina Libbey, Marisa Marsionis, Kim Munro, Felicity Wilkinson and Lee-Ann Woon each receive $5,000 to fulfill their industry leadership ambitions.
The new grants were open to female applicants with at least three years of professional experience in the Australian film industry and were supported by Creative Partnerships Australia through Plus1 and the generous donors of NMF’s Catalyst campaign.
NMF President Sasha Close said: “From a diverse and impressive range of applicants, the inaugural Catalyst Grants have been awarded to five women working across various sectors of the Australian film industry, from exhibition and distribution to audio post-production. and education, and at different stages of their careers. The Natalie Miller Fellowship is excited to be able to support the leadership development of these women through this new grant stream. The proposals each of the five recipients will undertake over the next 12 months are individual, challenging and uniquely tailored to the development of their leadership skills, aspirations, and goals. Congratulations.”
Libbey is a screen culture specialist, having worked in the film industry for over 15 years. An expert film and event planner, her passion is to create an inclusive, active and welcoming screen culture. Her previous roles include Public Engagement Manager at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Traveling Film Festival Manager for the Sydney Film Festival and Festival Manager at The Festivalists. She currently works as a freelance consultant while she completes a Master of Arts: Screen Business at AFTRS and she has extensive representation in many industry bodies including serving as an Independent Cinemas Australia Associate and AACTA.
Marsionis is a Sydney based sound editor, with work spanning feature films, TV, shorts, TVC and podcasts. After graduating with a Bachelor of Music and Sound Design from UTS, she quickly landed an internship as an assistant sound editor, falling in love with the film industry. Marsionis was then hired as a junior sound designer at Wildbear Entertainment, working on projects such as And We Danced, a documentary series about the Australian Ballet; and Brickman’s Jurassic World, an immersive Lego exhibit co-produced with Universal Studios. In 2021, she moved back to Sydney and went freelance focusing on long-form drama. Recent projects include Three Thousand Years of Longing, Wolf Like Me and Elvis.
Munro is a documentary maker, organizer, researcher and educator whose work exploring how expansive practices, experimental forms and emerging technologies intersect with social, cultural and environmental issues has been published and screened on ABC, as well as in galleries and galleries local and international. festival. He most recently co-edited the documentary essay collection, Constructions of the Real: Intersections of Documentary-based Film Practice and Theory (Intellect, 2023). Kim was the conference programmer for the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) for the 2020 and 2021 events and is also a lecturer at the University of South Australia.
Woon is an award-winning strategic marketing professional with a passion for filmmaking that has taken her around the world to major independent film distributors eOne Canada, StudioCanal UK and Madman Entertainment. From blockbuster franchises to Oscar winners, documentaries to family films, Lee-Ann has a proven track record of delivering innovative and creative campaigns for a diverse range of audiences and budgets. Career highlights include Hunt for the Wilderpeople (highest grossing NZ film of all time in Australia and New Zealand), winning UK Music Marketing Initiative of the Year for Searching for Sugar Man, the orchestrating a meet and greet with Celine Dion and the stars of The Breaker Upperers and the AACTA award-winning documentary, The Australian Dream.
