Sydney Film Festival Champions A New Generation Of Diverse Storytellers

If this year's Sydney Film Festival program is any indication, the Australian film industry is finally beginning to take diversity seriously; in a way that transcends mere tokenism or minority allocations and suggests a real undercurrent of structural change to local funding and festival systems.

Aside from a notable focus on Indigenous cinema, a big part of SFF's renewed endeavour to amplify diverse voices has arrived in the form of the Screenability initiative, presented in partnership with Screen NSW and the NSW Department of Family and Community Service. Three feature films and three short films will be screened as part of the new platform.

For emerging actor, writer and director Daniel Monks, the chance to screen his first feature film, Pulse, at this year's festival represents increased accessibility to an industry famously marked by gatekeepers and seemingly insatiable eligibility quotas.

"I think in the long term, [Screenability] will breed a wealth of fresh, necessary and challenging stories on our screens from people in our society who haven't had the platform to share their stories," Monks voices from Los Angeles, where he's one of this year's nominees for the prestigious Heath Ledger Scholarship.

"The film and television industries have been inaccessible to people with disabilities — both in front of and behind the camera."

"It will help to reinvigorate our screen industry. I think it's incredible and I'm very grateful to Sydney Film Festival for their progressiveness."

According to Screen Australia's groundbreaking 2016 study on diversity in Australian television drama, the disability community remain to be the most underrepresented on screens; making up 18% of the Australian population but only reflected in 4% of our on-screen characters.

"Often, these representations are not authentic to real lived experiences of people with disabilities," Monks adds. "The film and television industries have been inaccessible to people with disabilities — both in front of and behind the camera.

"I so admire Screen NSW's boldness and courage in creating this initiative, which has no precedent, and was born out of their recognition of an inequity within the industry and their desire to do something tangible to rectify it."

Pulse, which Monks has been writing since he graduated from Australian Film Television & Radio School back in 2009, is a simultaneously raw and empowering take on the rarely addressed intersection between sexuality and disability. With subtle nuances of science-fiction, the film explores the troubled inner-monologue of a young gay man with a physical disability as he struggles to reconcile pioneering medical science with the beauty ideals he's been held captive by for so long.

"Historically the sexuality of disabled people has either been denied, suppressed or quite literally neutered and to this day, we find the societal perception of people with disabilities to be frequently anything but sexual," Monks says.

"The overwhelming stereotype of the meek and feeble disabled person, the 'Tiny Tim', has been perpetuated, and I find the more we present multi-faceted, complex disabled people on our screens, the more it will challenge this limited perception and the more we as a minority will be humanised."

Along with his film partner, Stevie Cruz-Martin, who shot and directed Pulse, Monks is decidedly optimistic about his future in the film industry, juggling several upcoming projects which will see him refocus on sharpening his acting chops.

"It's my greatest passion," the multi-talented Monks tells me.

And it would seem his optimism hasn't been misplaced. In a sign that audiences are already relishing Sydney Film Festival's diverse 2017 program, both sessions of Pulse have sold out.