Directing
The Ballad of Technological Dependency links narratives of fact and fiction, threading together memory, friendship and community. Created by Australian artist Daniel Mudie Cunningham, the work combines answering-machine messages with photographs of thirteen friends, drawing on events and recollections from the previous year. The work emerged from Cunningham’s interest in American photographer Nan Goldin and Australian photographer William Yang, whose practices document the communities and subcultures to which they belong. Rather than attempting to tell the truth through photography, Cunningham became increasingly interested in blurring fact and fiction, using real people, messages and memories to invent parts of the story. In 2000, Cunningham made a sequel, Repeats.
A documentary of a gay couple's determination to be parents despite considerable legal and cultural limitations. Prevented from adopting a child, or accessing IVF facilities or commercial surrogacy in Australia, Tony Wood and Lee Matthews embarked on an international surrogacy arrangement that takes them to Iowa for the birth of their son.
Two Men & Two Babies is a 52min documentary that takes audiences back into the lives of Tony Wood and Lee Matthews, one of Australia's first gay male couples to take the controversial step of creating a family through commercial surrogacy. The process of commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia but in the United States the fertility industry is a multi billion-dollar business. Two Men and Two Babies is a follow-up to the Logie and IF Award nominated documentary, Man Made: The Story of Two Men & A Baby, which explored Tony & Lee's unrelenting desire to have a child, their decision to pursue commercial surrogacy, and their fraught journey to Cedar Rapids, Iowa for the birth of their son Alexander to a surrogate, Junoa.
