David King (Australia)

David King
b. January 31, 1955, Melbourne, Australia.

David King was a member of the Melbourne Filmmakers Co-Operative in the mid-1970s when Рinspired by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Vilgot Sj̦man, Fran̤ois Truffaut, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini Рhe began making student films on black and white 16mm with a borrowed spring-wound Bolex, a shaky tripod, and a handful of photoflood lights.

Following this, he briefly became a professional cameraman, shooting promotional, educational, and horse racing films throughout Victoria.

In the 1980s, he freelanced as a scriptwriter for the ABC, penning four episodes of the Awgie Award-winning young peoples’ television series, Home, which subsequently sold to networks all over the world.

Around this time, he collaborated with Brian Jones on the privately-funded independent low budget erotic rock’n’roll comedy Coming Of Age which was released through Greg Lynch Film Distributors and subsequently through Golden Lion.

He also received Government funding to develop a 13-part young people’s sci fi television series called The Parallax Factor, and had a feature film treatment for an erotic psychological thriller accepted for development by a New York-based distribution company. Unfortunately, neither project was produced.

During the early 1990s, David worked primarily as a journalist, writing a wide range of features and news articles for newspapers and magazines before returning to independent film/video-making in 1995 with the ultra-low budget educational documentary, Getting Together.

In Brisbane, he revived a semi-commercial film/video-making career by producing and directing a series of innovative ultra-low budget community service announcements, promotional, corporate, and educational videos for non-profit organizations. Although working for clients, he had total freedom to create, write, produce, and direct the projects as he saw fit.

David returned to dramatic film/video-making in 1999 with the short film Enigma (Digital Betacam, 16 mins) followed in 2002 by The Job (DVCam/MiniDV, 15 mins) which has now screened at 14 international film festivals in the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and Canada.

Dystopic Overload gained immediate acceptance, being screened at the Peel Your Eyes exhibition in Geelong, the Short Cut film/video screenings in Melbourne, Exploding Cinema in London, on Art television in France, and was the only Australian work of video art to be included in the 2012 Cologne International Videoart Festival which screens at numerous venues around the world.