MADELEINE BLACKWELL works across a range of performing arts and screen projects as a producer, writer and director.

In the early 1980’s she graduated from the NIDA acting course and worked as an actor for over twenty years before training as a director at The Australian Film, Television and Radio School. (AFTRS). She also studied with Ariane Mnouchkine at the Theatre du Soleil, and with Monika Pagneux in Paris.

From the outset she has been a collaborator in community-based arts projects; CRY OF ASIA with Eugene van Erven and the Asian Council for People’s Culture, VOICES OF SOULS with James McCaughey and the Timorese Cultural Group of Melbourne, LIVING THE DREAMING for the Jindi & Jupun Aboriginal community in Kempsey, NSW, and for the National Theatre of Venezuela she devised EVOCACIONES DE GUAYABAL with the young women of Guayabal.

For Utrecht University in the Netherlands she has directed Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST, KING LEAR, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM and a devised work, GONE FOR GOOD. She directed Euripides’ IPHIGENIA AT AULIS, FALLING (devised) and THE ARRAIGNMENT OF KING LEAR for the University of New South Wales where she taught theatre and performance subjects from 1999 to 2013. She directed THE ART OF WAR by Stephen Jeffries for the University of Newcastle and SQUARE EYES, a multi-media work devised with students of the Monash Institute of Performing Arts.

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Her first short film FATHER screened at the Tehran International Film Festival and The Women on Women Film Festival, Sydney. She was nominated for an AFI screenwriting award for SO CLOSE TO HOME, which won a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival and a Dendy Award at Sydney Film Festival.

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Her 2014 short film ELSEWHERE screened at Canberra Short Film Festival, Le Bout du Monde festival, France and Fajr Film festival in Tehran, Iran.

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She is currently writing, production and filming her feature length film DAMAGE.