Gillian May Armstrong (born 18 December 1950) is an Australian feature film and documentary director, best known for My Brilliant Career (1979), Mrs. Soffel (1984), High Tide (1987), The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992), and Little Women (1994). She is a Member of the Order of Australia. She has won many film awards, including an AFI Best Director Award, has been nominated for numerous others, and is the holder of several honorary doctorates.
Early life and education
Gillian May Armstrong in Melbourne, Victoria. She was the middle child of a local real estate agent father and a primary school teacher mother who stopped outside work to rear a family.
She grew up in the suburb of Vermont, which had recently established the beginnings of the Swinburne Film and Television School within the Graphic Art School. Originally she wanted to become set and costume designer, but ended up majoring in filmmaking after becoming interested in films.
After working for a year as an assistant editor in a commercial film house, she applied for a place on the one-year postgraduate directors course offered under a pilot training scheme at the newly created national film school, the Australian Film and Television School (now AFTRS) in 1973. Only 12 students were selected, and they were "really tested as directors". Two films that she made there won several awards, and one was screened at an international student film festival. She went overseas with the film, and then travelled around for 18 months.
Career
Following a string of short films and documentaries, Armstrong achieved her first directorial recognition through her first full-length film The Singer and the Dancer, shot on 16 mm film, which won the best narrative film award at the 1976 Sydney Film Festival. During the time of the development of Australian Cinema Armstrong recalls in a Washington Post interview that tremendous tax breaks led to a frightful overproduction. Everybody was interested in doing deals and even stockbrokers were becoming directors. However, very few of them had the commitment to cinema that Armstrong and others had, and the films would be shown for a week or two, or not released at all. Following the success of My Brilliant Career, which was nominated for an Academy Award in Best Costume Design, Armstrong directed the Australian rock-musical Starstruck which proved her ability to tackle more contemporary and experimental subject matter and styles.
She has directed a number of rock music videos in the early 1980s, including 1984's "Bop Girl" by Pat Wilson, which featured Nicole Kidman.
Since then, Armstrong has specialised in period drama. She was the first foreign woman to be approached by the American film company MGM to finance her direction of a big-budget feature, which became Mrs. Soffel (1984) starring Mel Gibson and Diane Keaton. This film tells the true story of an affair between a prisoner and a prison warden's wife, and was relatively well received by audiences and critics.
On returning to Australia, Armstrong continued to make both documentaries and feature films. She earned great recognition for High Tide (1987) and The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992), for which she was nominated for Best Director at the 1987 and 1992 Australian Film Institute Awards (AFIs). The Last Days of Chez Nous also earned her a nomination at the Berlin Film Festival. Despite this, both films were largely unrecognised internationally This adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel was one of the most popular films of the year, and emphasises Armstrong's focus on portraying the intimate lives of strong female characters and their relationships with one another.
She followed this success three years later with the film Oscar and Lucinda (1997), starring Ralph Fiennes and a relatively unknown Cate Blanchett. This film, based on the novel by Australian writer Peter Carey, tells the story of a mismatched love affair in 19th-century Australia. It received mixed reviews both locally and internationally, despite its high production value and strong performances by the film main actors.
Personal life
Armstrong is married to John Pleffer, and they have two daughters.
Recognition and awards
Armstrong is a Member of the Order of Australia, "In recognition of service to the film industry".
She has won many awards, including an AFI Best Director Award, and has been nominated for numerous other awards, including a Palme D'Or and two Golden Bear Awards. She has received multiple hdoctorates, including an honorary doctor of letters from University of Sydney, and an honorary doctorate from Swinburne University of Technology.
Film awards and nominations
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year !! Award
!Category!! Film !! Result
!Notes
|-
| 1979 || Cannes Film Festival
|Palme d'Or || rowspan="4" | My Brilliant Career ||
|
|-
| 1979 || Australian Film Institute Awards
|Best Director||
|
|-
| 1981 || London Critics Circle Film Awards
|Special Achievement Award ||
|
|-
| 1985 || Berlin Film Festival
|Golden Bear|| Mrs. Soffel||
|
|-
| 1980 || Touch Wood || Documentary ||
|-
| 1980 || Fourteen's Good, Eighteen's Better || Documentary || also producer
|-
| 1982 || Starstruck || Feature film ||
|-
| 1983 || Having a Go || Documentary ||
|-
| 1984 || Mrs. Soffel || Feature film ||
|-
| 1986 || Hard to Handle || Documentary || Concert video of Bob Dylan's 1986 True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Screened as an HBO special. Released only on VHS.
|-
| 1987 || High Tide || Feature film ||
|-
| 1988 || Bingo, Bridesmaids & Braces || Documentary ||
|-
| 1991 || Fires Within || Feature film ||
|-
| 1992 || The Last Days of Chez Nous || Feature film ||
|-
| 1994 || Little Women || Feature film ||
|-
| 2001 || Charlotte Gray || Feature film ||
|-
| 2006 || Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst || Documentary ||
|-
| 2007 || Death Defying Acts || Feature film ||
|-
| 2009 || Love, Lust & Lies || Documentary ||
|-
| 2015 || Women He's Undressed || Documentary ||
|-
|}
Footnotes
References
External links
- Video Gillian Armstrong Video Compilation
- "Armstrong and Cox: if a Picture Paints a Thousand Words" Dual Interview Big Ideas
- Literature on Gillian Armstrong
- Gillian Armstrong AM from National Portrait Gallery (Australia)