The Red Earth
TFI Suppport
Tribeca All Access® 2005
Logline
Queensland, Australia 1880s: An illicit affair between the young Chinese mail-order bride of a cane cutter and the privileged son of an English plantation owner, leads to a clash of cultures with tragic results. Co-writer Cory Taylor, Producer Trish Lake. Period Drama.
Liselle Mei
Director/Screenwriter/Producer
Born and raised in London, Liselle Mei studied filmmaking at New York University and graduated with honors in 1995. Her thesis film, Ana: Portrait in Days won the first place Wasserman Award at NYU’s First Run Film Festival. It toured the world festival circuit, winning the Empire State Award for Best Experimental Short in 1996 and a Student Academy Award nomination. Mei currently works as a fiction writer/director and producer. Her company, Qi film, produces social/political documentaries and independent feature films with a global focus. Her most recent film, Lower East Side Stories, is a series of portraits of women living in the Lower East Side of New York City. She is a recipient of the Women In Film Finishing Fund Award 2003, the Jerome Foundation’s N.Y. Media Arts Award 2003 and a 2004 fellowship in Screenwriting. She was also selected to attend the annual Talent Campus for emerging writer/directors at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival.
Cory Taylor
Screenwriter
Cory Taylor studied at Oxford University and has written screen-plays for producers Joan Lang and Pat Lovell and teleplays for ABC and Channel 7. In 1987 she was awarded an Australian Writer's Guild "AWGIE" for Funeral Going. In 1988, her script for Alterations was nomiated for an AWGIE. Taylor began writing about Japan in 1983 and moved to Surfers Paradise in 1989 in time to witness the influx of Japanese migrants to the Gold Coast during the book years in the Japanese economy. This became the background to a four-part drama series entitled Paradaisu, which Taylor wrote for SBS Independent.
Trish Lake
Producer
Trish Lake is an independent Queensland-based producer of features, television and documentaries. Her production company Freshwater Pictures recently produced the critically acclaimed feature, Gettin' Square with co-producing partners Working Title Australia and Mushroom Pictures. The film received 14 Australian Film Institute nominations. Lake was recently appointed Film Councilor for the Screen Producers' Association of Australia (SPAA) and was selected for the Inaugural Producers' Network at Cannes 2004.