Dr Donna Mcrae

Donna McRae is a Melbourne-based filmmaker whose work has been screened across several continents. Having trained and worked as an actor, visual artist/ researcher and filmmaker, she is uniquely placed to make films that are thoughtfully researched, visually beautiful and politically charged.

Embracing drama, documentary and video installation, her work reflects a deep interest in both genre and feminist theory, an unconventional but highly potent combination. Donna has repeatedly proven herself to be undaunted by ‘swimming against the tide’, unafraid to work across colour and black & white, long takes
or multi-channel, she possesses a fluency that is exceptional. Her particular interrogations of 19th century gender roles and post-punk rock‘n’roll once again offer a surprising and powerful potential.
After graduating from the VCA Film and TV School in Melbourne, Donna McRae made several shorts which were all selected for local and international film festivals. Her first micro-budget feature film, Johnny Ghost (2012), was selected into numerous film festivals locally and internationally, winning 7 awards including Best Female Director at Berlin Independent Film Festival, Best Feature at South Texas Underground Film Festival and two Special Jury Prizes, including Hamilton Film Festival, Canada,. The film has North American distribution with Continuum Pictures, and local distribution with Titan View.

Donna’s latest micro-budget horror feature Lost Gully Road has won three international awards for Best Feature, in Los Angeles, Peru and Texas, has distribution with Umbrella Entertainment and has been sold to Channel 9.

Donna has an interest in video installation and has shown her work in art galleries both here and overseas. She has also made several collaborative works with visual artist Michael Vale, including music videos for Dave Graney and Clare Moore.
Currently she has just finished post production on a feature documentary about a chimpanzee called Cobby: The Other Side of Cute, and is in development for various projects, including her next feature film Kate Kelly, a ‘ghost western’ about Ned Kelly’s sister; and an untitled ‘Female Horror Anthology’ project with Unicorn Films.
The Kate Kelly project was selected for Frontiéres Co-Production Market at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival in July 2016.

She has also collaborated with visual artist Michael Vale since 2002, principally on the feature film project Le Chien qui Fume (currently in development with Screen Australia & Film Victoria support). They have also made several short films & videos together culminating in a film award from Asolo Film Festival, Italy, for best film on art, and worked with installation art (The Innocents Westspace, Melbourne 2011).

COBBY: The Other Side of Cute had it's world premiere at the San Francisco Documentary Festival in June, follwed by kansas International Film Festival and screenings in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne. 

Donna is a Senior lecturer at Deakin University in the Film &TV Department.