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Strewth Mate - We're Broke Downunder

The Australian Film Finance Corporation, the government film funding body, has announced it will fund no more films until after 1st July because it has run out of money, having spent its $35 million film allocation by last December.

Chief executive Brian Rosen said similar situations occurred every year, but added that this financial year the organisation funded 16 films - more movies than any other year.

"That means there's going to be less money," he said. "There's always going to be people who miss out," he said.

"The fact is the demand on FFC money is far in excess of what we have in funding. We need more funding but similarly, we need more private-sector money and for the distributors and the TV networks to put up more money.”

Fortuitously perhaps, the Australian Film Commission is currently ruinning a series of low budget filmmaking courses aimed at writers, directors and producers

IndiVision Project Lab got underway in Sydney this week with a series of script workshops for their low-budget movies. This year's Lab has eight teams of writers, directors and producers working on films that include a bikie action-adventure, a family drama and a black comedy about rehab.