Australian Film Industry Pioneer a Mentor to Many

New Zealand-born filmmaker David Hannay, who has died aged 74, will be remembered as one of the pioneers of the modern Australian film industry, a passionate cinephile, mentor and loyal friend.

Hannay entered the film industry at Sydney’s Artransa Park Studios in 1958 as an extras casting assistant on Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.

As a producer and executive producer he was involved in more than 50 film and television productions. His feature film credits include Stone, The Man From Hong Kong, Solo, Death of a Soldier, Emma’s War, Mapantsula, Shotgun Wedding, Gross Misconduct, Dead Funny, Savage Play, Love in Ambush and the feature documentary Stone Forever.

“One of the last of the ever decreasing members of that small group of producers who was there at the start of the new Australian industry, David was a legendary trailblazer, an industry stalwart, a mentor to many, and a loyal friend,” producer Antony Ginnane said.

“While the film industry is a business you need passion to work in it. I say ‘I don’t do it for a living; I do what I do to live. It is my passion,’” Hannay said in 2007.

Among his many honours, he received the Ken G Hall Film Preservation Award, the AFI Raymond Longford Award, the Australian Screen Sound Guild’s Syd Butterworth Lifetime Achievement Award, the Screen Producers Association’s first Maura Fay award for service to the industry, film pioneer of the year from the Society of Australian Cinema Pioneers and a lifetime achievement award from the Producers and Directors Guild of Australia.

Original article by Don Groves, Inside Film, April 1, 2014.