This fascinating story will be shared with us at the August Four O’clock Forum when Winston Furlong speaks about abandoning a successful career as an engineer for the precarious world of independent filmmaking.
During the session, Winston will talk about his sea change into filmmaking and the many parallels he sees between systems engineering and filmmaking. If you were to ask him, “What’s money for?” he would answer without hesitation, “It’s to make things happen”.
Winston graduated at City University, London with a Master of Systems Engineering degree and worked on the development of state-of-the-art systems in the UK and Australia for 35 years, before deciding to take on something entirely new.
He enrolled full-time in a two-year course at film school then embarked on a filmmaking career. Meanwhile, he wrote and directed amateur stage plays, culminating in a dazzling two-hour staging of the Hindu epic Ramayan in a park in Templestowe.
After receiving an award for one screenplay and a second screenplay titled Taj being nominated (top 5) by the Australian Writers’ Guild in 2008 for best unproduced screenplay, Winston went ‘all in’ by mortgaging his home in Blackburn, then financed, directed and co-produced Taj.
Premiering at the prestigious Busan International Film Festival in Korea, Taj (92min) has been described as fresh, emotional, original and intelligent. Debutante Mahesh Jadu was cast in the lead role and is now an established actor.
Here is a brief summary of the film’s storyline: “When a self-absorbed writer takes up a neglected relationship with his 12-year-old daughter from a broken marriage, and they find a large box of white Lego bricks at a garage sale and she decides she wants to build a Lego model of the Taj Mahal, life takes a new turn. But where will it lead – to his redemption or is it a bridge too far?”
Winston is currently in pre-production with his new film Grasshoppers – as in the cocktail, not the insect.
The August Four O’clock Forum 22AAFR06 Filmmaking will be held in Studio 2 at 4.00pm on Wednesday 31 August and you can secure your seat either by booking online or at the office.
As we have increased the capacity for the 27 July Forum 22AAFR05 Estate Planning there are now a few spaces available.