The 2020 Mittelheuser Scholar-in-Residence was awarded to Meredith Garlick for her project Reel Times: Thirty Years of Queensland Filmmaking (1990-2020). 

“Reel Times” is a survey of Queensland filmmaking spanning the past 30 years. It looks at Queensland stories (factual or fictional), creatively driven and made by Queenslanders for local, national and international audiences. Meredith Garlick’s ambition is to understand what drives filmmakers to tell their stories, as well as to collate a complete picture of the way the state has represented itself.

Filmmaking is fundamentally a means by which we tell our stories and share our histories. Whether it is a straight-out observational documentary or a genre-bending online series, filmmakers seek to explore the world, to show us relatable characters and to shed light on forgotten, overlooked parts of our shared past. In the period of the intended research, the Queensland industry has professionalised and grown to a point where there is a rich vein of stories to explore. We might consider this the first generation of Queensland filmmaking.