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BIographies

Arrivals

Corrie Chen Writer / Director

Born in the concrete jungles of Taiwan and raised in Australia, Corrie Chen is an award-winning filmmaker, whose diverse body of work has screened extensively at academy-accredited film festivals around the world, including MIFF, LA Shortsfest, Flickerfest, Rio de Janeiro, and more. An alumni of VCA school of Film & TV, she is an AACTA Award nominee, ADG award winner, and an awardee of Screen Australia’s talent escalator program. To foster her love affair with television, she recently completed director attachments on the Emmy and BAFTA-nominated Nowhere Boys, and to Shawn Seet (The Code) on the Channel 7 mini-series Peter Allen: Not the Boy Next Door. She is currently set to direct This Is Shyness – a web series co-produced by Essential Media, in development with Screen Australia. She was also recently selected for the highly competitive Film Victoria Catapult Feature Lab (for early career screenwriters). Corrie is naturally drawn to stories that explore the themes of identity and belonging. Perhaps it’s something to do with her intercontinental background. She’s still trying to figure it out.

Penelope Chai Writer

Penelope Chai is a Melbourne-based writer who’s lived and worked in London, Edinburgh, Sydney, Amsterdam, Honiara and Kakadu. Her short stories have been published widely and shortlisted for the Melbourne Lord Mayor's Creative Writing Award. Her screenwriting credits include Love & Fury (documentary with co-writer John Hughes, ABC 2013) and She was She (short film, MIFF 2014). Both were nominated for AWGIE Awards. She’s also received a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship and was part of Film Victoria’s 2012 Catapult Lab. Her screenplay Mary, Mary, a dystopian sci-fi co-written with Adam Spellicy, won the 2016 John Hinde Award for Best Unproduced Science Fiction Screenplay. Penelope is currently developing a web series called Other People’s Problems with Jane Dickenson (Producer Charlotte Seymour; EP Sue Maslin, with Screen Australia development) based on their real life letter writing project Clothing for Correspondence. With Matteo Bernardini, she’s also writing an action adventure set eight years after happily-ever-after called Cinderella Must Die. Penelope is drawn to stories set in familiar yet slightly heightened worlds, where the ordinary is rendered extraordinary.

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