Sally Aitken - film maker

CAPTURING incredible real

STORIES

Writer and film director Sally Aitken’s 2021 film Playing with Sharks was nominated in the News and Documentary category for Outstanding Nature Documentary at the 2022 National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Emmy Awards. The feature documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (a huge coup, as very few films are selected for this prestigious festival), and it’s since had an amazing run of awards and festival showings.

Playing with Sharks profiles Valerie Taylor, the Australian pioneering ocean conservationist, diver and underwater photographer who has dedicated her life to protecting sharks.

“I hadn’t been aware of Valerie Taylor growing up,” says Sally, “but she and her cinematographer husband, Ron Taylor, were legendary on Australian TV in the 1970s and 1980s for their ground-breaking underwater films. Valerie is a contemporary of Jacques Cousteau, whose expeditions were handsomely supported by the French government. Whereas Valerie and Ron were working class DIYers, fashioning everything they needed from scratch – their cameras, underwater housings, wetsuits, even weight belts. They’re a remarkable couple and it’s an amazing partnership on and off camera.”

The film charts Valerie’s personal trajectory from spear-fishing champion to shark protector after realising these magnificent creatures were very misunderstood.

“I had thousands of hours (half a century’s worth) of underwater film as well as access to Valerie’s handwritten diaries, kept every year since 1969. And she’s still going strong! At 86, her passion has not dimmed. If anything, her call to protect the ocean is more urgent than ever.”

Sally left Dio in 1993 to do a Bachelor of Communications Studies at AUT. At the end of her degree, she made a film about the iconic birth of pirate radio station Radio Hauraki in the 1960s.

“I was working part time in radio in Auckland while I was a student, and I was dumbfounded the story had never been told. A couple of feature films have since been made about the Radio Hauraki saga, but this was the first time the original ‘pirates’ had told their story. It was pretty special for a freshfaced student like me.”

Sally’s film was highly praised and was acquired by TVNZ, something that was unprecedented for a graduate at the time. After a couple of years combining radio and television work in New Zealand, Sally moved to London to do an MA in documentary production at Goldsmiths College, University of London. It was there that she met some future colleagues – and her husband – and her filmmaking career took off.

Since 2010, Sally has been living in Sydney. She originally went there to work on a French-Australian co-production called Au Bonheur des Dames, l’invention du Grand Magasin (known in English as Seduction in the City), a cheeky feminist history of the department store.

“The job itself was dreamy,” says Sally. “After arriving in Sydney, I promptly left again for Paris! I lived and worked there for two months during the shoot with my then one-year-old daughter and husband along for the ride.

“Since making this film I’ve travelled to many countries for work, including sailing the Pacific Ocean with Sam Neill for a documentary series, Uncharted, which examined Captain Cook’s epic Pacific voyages from indigenous perspectives. An absolute privilege.”

Much of her impressive catalogue of work focuses on well-known Australians. Sally’s feature documentary A Cinematic Life about world-renowned film critic David Stratton was selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 2017 where it was nominated for a Camera D’Or. Also among her filmography are Getting Frank Gehry (2015), which explores the construction of the architect’s first Australian building; Nolan – The Man and the Myth (2018) a portrait of Australian artist Sir Sidney Nolan; and Shark Beach (2021) in which actor Chris Hemsworth looks at how sharks and humans can safely co-exist after a spate of attacks off Australia’s east coast.

Recently Sally joined forces with producer and media executive Aline Jacques to launch an independent Sydney-based production company called SAM Content. They have several projects in production, including a documentary on the 30-year history of the iconic Australian group The Wiggles, which is being produced in partnership with another Dio alumna, filmmaker Cass Avery.

Sally’s also excited about another project she’s working on. “I have a film documentary, and drama series in active development about the story of the world’s first female rock-nroll roadie, Tana Douglas. She started with AC/DC as a teenage runaway and has basically worked with every major rock star since. Let’s just say the soundscape alone is going to be loud!”

You can watch Playing with Sharks on Disney+.

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