Charmian Clift: Life Burns High Film Maker Q&A

After the film's Thursday screening Writer, Producer and Director Rachel Lane and Co-Producer Sue Milliken will be on-hand for insightful Q&A to discuss Lane's documentary Charmian Clift: Life Burns High.

The film tracks the life of one of Australia’s most dazzling writers, Charmian Clift, from her childhood in the sunlit world of ocean and freedom in the seaside town of Kiama in the 1920s, through her fabled romance with writer George Johnston, to her too early death at the age of 46.

This event is exclusive to Hazelhurst Film Club Members, to join call 02 8536 5700.

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About the film makers

Rachel Lane

Rachel’s mission to tell the story of Charmian Clift began in 2002 when she read The Life And Myth Of Charmian Clift by Nadia Wheatley. Captivated by Charmian’s bravery and lust for life, Rachel secured the rights to the book in 2014. She has since been resolute in bringing it to the screen, raising the majority of the funds through Documentary Australia Foundation. The timing ultimately proved fortuitous, coinciding with the year of Charmian’s centenary, the revived interest in her story and her work, including the republication of the essays in 2022 and the publication this year of the unfinished novel, The End of the Morning.

Rachel’s most recent production Charmian Clift – Life Burns High which she wrote, produced, and directed was selected as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2024.
Her documentary Alofa which she also wrote, produced and directed, was broadcast on Compass, ABC TV late 2024. Her previous documentary Faithfully Me which again she wrote, produced and directed, was purchased by the ABC and screened in 2020. It was part of the official selection at the St Kilda Film Festival in 2021. She received a nomination for Best Director at the Australian Directors Guild Awards in the same year. She was a producer on the 2019 Aussie feature film Bilched which had a national release at Event Cinemas and was awarded Best Film at Chelsea Film Festival, New York. Rachel’s other projects, Here I Am and Secret and Sacred, have screened on SBS and NITV.

Sue Milliken

Sue Milliken’s credits include the documentaries Sydney, Story of A City, an Imax film about Sydney for the millennium, and The Redfern Story, about the National Black Theatre movement in Redfern in the 1970s. Her feature film credits include the Vietnam War movie, The Odd Angry Shot, Dating
The Enemy and Sirens and she has worked with Bruce Beresford as producer on The Fringe Dwellers, Black Robe, Paradise Road and most recently, Ladies in Black, which she co-wrote.

“When Rachel approached me to join her in a film about Charmian Clift, I readily agreed. I knew Charmian and George briefly in the late 1960s when I was a very junior production assistant at the ABC, and I worked with director Storry Walton on a documentary about Sidney Nolan, which the Johnstons fronted and wrote. It was a dazzling experience, I have never forgotten how charismatic they both were, and especially Charmian. One night she said to me, “Everyone always says poor old George. No one ever says poor old Charm.” We had no idea she was so close to the end of her life.I had a further association with the story when I produced a remake of the television adaptation of George Johnston’s My Brother Jack in 2001.”