''Frackman'' is a 2015 Australian
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
about the former construction worker turned
anti-fracking activist Dayne Pratzky
Dayne Pratzky is an Australian anti-fracking activist known colloquially as the '' Frackman''. He is also the subject of a 2015 feature-length documentary film of the same name produced by Smith & Nasht.
A former tunnel-digger and resident of S ...
as he responds to the expansion of the coal seam gas industry near
Tara, Queensland
Tara is a rural town and locality in the Western Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , the locality of Tara had a population of 1,980 people.
Geography
Tara is on the Darling Downs. The town is at the centre of the locality. Immediat ...
. The film was produced by Simon Nasht of
Smith & Nasht Smith & Nasht is an Australian media production company formed by serial entrepreneur Dick Smith and filmmaker Simon Nasht. The company was established in 2010 and has specialised in "global issue" films. As of 2019, topics have included energy, cl ...
in collaboration with
Trish Lake
Trish Lake is an Australian producer of feature films and documentaries and former ABC TV journalist. Among her works are ''Gettin' Square ''(2003)'', The Burning Season (2008 film), The Burning Season ''(2008) and ''Frackman'' (2015). She is the ...
of Freshwater Pictures and was co-directed by Richard Todd of Aquarius Productions with
Jonathan Stack
Jonathan David Stack (born June 2, 1957) is an American documentary filmmaker. He is also a co-founder of World Vasectomy Day.
Biography
Born in New York City to a teacher and worker, Jonathan spent much of his childhood exploring. He took an e ...
. The film also features the president of
Lock the Gate
The Lock the Gate Alliance is an incorporated Australian community action group which was formed in 2010 in response to the expansion of the coal mining and coal seam gas industries, which were encroaching on agricultural land, rural communities a ...
,
Drew Hutton
Peter Drew Hutton (born 1947) is an Australian activist, academic, campaigner and past political candidate. Hutton co-founded the Queensland Greens (in 1990) and Australian Greens (in 1991) and ran in elections in Queensland and Australia at a ...
, conservative radio personality
Alan Jones and many other residents of Queensland and New South Wales.
''Frackman'' officially premiered in New South Wales in March 2015 and began a regional tour in marginal electorates before the
2015 New South Wales election.
''Frackman'' won Best Film and Best Environmental Film at the 2015 Byron Bay International Film Festival
The Byron Bay Film Festival is a popular AACTA Awards accredited independent awards-based film event held in the late Australian summer at the Byron Community & Cultural Centre, in the coastal town of Byron Bay.
The festival was established in ...
. The film was released on DVD and digital platforms on 9 December 2015.
Production
Aquarius Productions commenced production on ''Frackman'' in early 2011. The film was shot in Queensland and New South Wales and according to director, Richard Todd, the story is told "through the eyes of Dayne 'The Frackman' Pratzky". By November 2011, Todd had followed sub plot character stories with
Drew Hutton
Peter Drew Hutton (born 1947) is an Australian activist, academic, campaigner and past political candidate. Hutton co-founded the Queensland Greens (in 1990) and Australian Greens (in 1991) and ran in elections in Queensland and Australia at a ...
,
Jeremy Buckingham
Jeremy Nova Buckingham (born 22 November 1973 in Tasmania) is a former Australian politician. He was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council from 2011 to 2019. He was a Greens member from 2011 to 2018, but resigned from the party o ...
, Dr Marian Lloyd Smith,
Bob Irwin
Robert Eric Irwin (born 8 June 1939) is an Australian naturalist, animal conservationist, former zookeeper, and a herpetologist known for his conservation and husbandry work with apex predators and reptiles. He is the founder of the Queenslan ...
,
Barnaby Joyce
Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce (born 17 April 1967) is an Australian politician who served as the 17th deputy prime minister of Australia under Malcolm Turnbull from 2016 to 2018 and under Scott Morrison from 2021 to 2022. He was the leader of the ...
.
Alan Jones had been filmed at a community gathering in
Bowral
Bowral () is the largest town in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia, about ninety minutes southwest of Sydney. It is the main business and entertainment precinct of the Wingecarribee Shire and Highlands.
Bowral once served ...
and also in
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...
. Time-critical shoots had already occurred and further filming was expected to occur in mid 2013. Editing was expected to follow in late 2013. Todd, who was born in
Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to:
*Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England
*Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England
*Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...
and hails from Margaret River in Western Australia has said that he is "attracted to stories that require a very close and personal relationship with a central character." He has also said that he has "the ability to be 'let in' to complex and difficult to film situations."
In April 2014, Richard Todd was editing the film with Axel Grigor and announced that the film would be released in "the second half of 2014".
Release
The film was launched with a preview screening in February 2015 in Adelaide, closely followed by a regional Australian tour which commenced in New South Wales in March. The film's promotional poster featured endorsements from conservative radio commentator
Alan Jones and former leader of the
Australian Greens
The Australian Greens, commonly known as The Greens, are a confederation of Green state and territory political parties in Australia. As of the 2022 federal election, the Greens are the third largest political party in Australia by vote and th ...
,
Bob Brown
Robert James Brown (born 27 December 1944) is a former Australian politician, medical doctor and environmentalist. He was a senator and the parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens. Brown was elected to the Australian Senate on the Tasman ...
. The film had its USA premiere at DOC NYC on 14 November 2015. The film is scheduled for release on DVD and digital platforms on 9 December 2015.
Reception
''Frackman'' won Best Film and Best Environmental Film at the 2015
Byron Bay International Film Festival
The Byron Bay Film Festival is a popular AACTA Awards accredited independent awards-based film event held in the late Australian summer at the Byron Community & Cultural Centre, in the coastal town of Byron Bay.
The festival was established in ...
.
The film subsequently began a screening tour, during which it played to many full houses.
Following a preview screening of ''Frackman'' in Adelaide in February 2015 as part of the documentary film festival DocWeek, the Energy Resource Information Centre published a list of 'Frackman Facts' on their website. The centre also questioned the commitment of public funds to the project and described Pratzky as having "made it a personal mission to disrupt, protest and demonise an industry that he doesn’t agree with." The film attracted criticism from former Federal
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms the f ...
leader
Mark Latham
Mark William Latham (born 28 February 1961) is an Australian politician and media commentator, currently serving as a member in the New South Wales Legislative Council. He previously served as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and ...
who described it as "a fracking false alarm" in an opinion piece published by the ''
Australian Financial Review
''The Australian Financial Review'' (abbreviated to the ''AFR'') is an Australian business-focused, compact daily newspaper covering the current business and economic affairs of Australia and the world. The newspaper is based in Sydney, New Sou ...
''. He went on to criticise the
anti-fracking movement
The anti-fracking movement is a political movement that seeks to ban the practice of extracting natural gasses from shale rock formations to provide power due to its negative environmental impact. These effects include the contamination of drinking ...
by describing it as "one of the most fraudulent, misinformed and irrational pieces of politics I have ever seen."
Funding controversy
Prior to its official release, the feature-length documentary film ''Frackman'' attracted attention due to the substantial state and federal government financial support it received. A private company, Frackman Films Pty Ltd was registered on 17 June 2013. The film received $220,000 from
Screen Queensland
Screen or Screens may refer to:
Arts
* Screen printing (also called ''silkscreening''), a method of printing
* Big screen, a nickname associated with the motion picture industry
* Split screen (filmmaking), a film composition paradigm in which m ...
,
$156,400 from
ScreenWest
Screenwest is Western Australia's screen funding and development organisation, working in partnership with the screen industry to develop, support and promote film, television and digital media production in Western Australia. Screenwest receives ...
(Western Australia)
and a further $200,000 from
Screen Australia
Screen Australia is the Australian Federal Government's key funding body for the Australian screen production industry, created under the ''Screen Australia Act 2008''. From 1 July 2008 Screen Australia took over the functions of its predecess ...
. ''
The West Australian
''The West Australian'' is the only locally edited daily newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia. It is owned by Seven West Media (SWM), as is the state's other major newspaper, ''The Sunday Times''. It is the second-oldest continuousl ...
'' newspaper published that it understood that the Screen West funding equated to 15% of the production's total budget,
with the production also eligible for a $435,000'' ''film producer tax credit. The film's co-producer, Trish Lake from Freshwater Pictures, described the government funding as an example of Government supporting free speech. Queensland's Arts Minister
Ian Walker agreed, telling the media:
“If anyone was looking for proof that freedom of speech flourishes in Queensland, this documentary is it.”
Western Australian Acting State Premier
Kim Hames
Kim Desmond Hames (born 24 March 1953) is an Australian politician who was a Liberal Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia from 1993 to 2001 and from 2005 to 2017. He served as a minister in the governments of Richard Co ...
told ''The West Australian'':
"The State Government supports the jobs, energy supply and opportunities that a well-regulated shale gas industry can provide for WA families... However, we also support the independence of the ScreenWest funding selection process, which does not involve State ministers. I am advised the ScreenWest board considered this project at length and took into account artistic and production merits."
Pratzky found the Government funding funny but said that he didn't believe that it undermined the production. He said of the production: "It’s telling the truth and cutting through a layer of propaganda."
The film's producer Simon Nasht described the film as "polemical" and "not a documentary that the public broadcasters, the ABC or
SBS, would touch with a barge pole."
Screen Australia project assessment
Following the film's release, internal documents released via
Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request:
* Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act
* ...
request revealed that two of the three Screen Australia assessors had questioned director Richard Todd's "lack of experience" or "relative inexperience." Prior to funding approval the assessors expressed concerns related to the proposal's "finance plan, high budget and certain line items." In May 2013, film producer Simon Nasht had received a letter from Mary-Ellen Mullane, one of the assessors, who requested that
Simon Sheikh
Simon Sheikh (born 1986 in Sydney) is the CEO of superannuation fund Future Super and an Australian activist. He was the National Director of GetUp! from 2008 to 2012. He was a delegate to the economics stream of the Australia 2020 Summit and w ...
's editorial/creative control and co-producer status be removed from the contract. Mullane wrote that "''
GetUp!
GetUp! is an independent progressive Australian political activist group. It was launched in August 2005 to encourage Internet activism in Australia, though it has increasingly engaged in offline community organising.
GetUp is an independent ...
''
's contribution can only be considered as an alternative distribution strategy, not a co-production partner."
Philanthropic support
The production also attracted
philanthropic
Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...
support by pitching at an event called ''Good Pitch'', hosted by
Shark Island Institute and Documentary Australia Foundation at the
Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architec ...
. In total, over $2 million was raised between seven different feature-length documentary film productions which pitched to an audience of approximately 300 on the day. Distributor Madman committed $10,000 towards ''Frackman'' at the event and offered to work with eOne to maximise home entertainment revenues. Producer
Trish Lake
Trish Lake is an Australian producer of feature films and documentaries and former ABC TV journalist. Among her works are ''Gettin' Square ''(2003)'', The Burning Season (2008 film), The Burning Season ''(2008) and ''Frackman'' (2015). She is the ...
said of the fundraising at Good Pitch:
“While some... goes to production, the majority will be spent on outreach — building audience interest and excitement ahead of the roll out early next year as it starts an innovative campaign across rural Australia in cinemas and community halls and culminating in city theatres for city dwellers... It will be a roll out over many months with a dialogue we hope for whatever time it takes for state and federal governments to re-think their current deals with the global gas industry.”
''Frackman'' also partnered with Getup! and Lock the Gate and was officially launched in March 2015, followed by a tour of
New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
,
then screenings in Western Australia and Victoria in April.
The film's financials and legals were managed by Daniel (Dan) Lake, nephew of producer Trish Lake. Dan Lake was appointed as a director of production investment at Screen Queensland on 3 November 2014.
Missing interviews
Gladstone LNG export contracts and environmental approvals
The film's director Richard Todd told the media that his team was surprised that gas export approvals in Queensland had been granted. Todd said that he had interviewed a woman directly involved with the process, who had told him that "She basically quit her job because she was given an ultimatum to make sure those contracts were passed at all costs."
While the dredging of Gladstone Harbor and the construction of the Curtis Island LNG export facility featured in the film, export approvals and contracts were not discussed. The first LNG export shipment departed Gladstone on 5 January 2015.
References
External links
*
*{{IMDb title, 3557446
Australian documentary films
2015 films
Documentary films about hydraulic fracturing
2015 documentary films
Films directed by Jonathan Stack
2010s English-language films