The chauvel award
In 2016, the Gold Coast Film Festival reinvigorated The Chauvel Award – a prestigious industry award previously part of the Brisbane International Film Festival.
Established in 1992, in honour of two of Australia’s most significant filmmakers, Charles and Elsa Chauvel, the award acknowledges significant contribution to the Australian Screen Industry.
Their early silent films, Moth of Moonbi and Greenhide, were both set entirely in Queensland, while their later films; Heritage and Rats of Tobruk included substantial sequences filmed on location in the Gold Coast hinterland.
Their greatest film, Sons of Matthew, draws on tales of the O’Reilly family and their selection of property around Springbrook on the Lamington Plateau and is the quintessential Australian pioneering epic.
Today, Gold Coast Film Festival venues are within sight of some of the locations that inspired some of the most stirring sequences in the Chauvel oeuvre.
About Charles Chauvel (1897 - 1959)
PREVIOUS CHAUVEL Award recipients
2021
Sue Maslan ao
2019
SIGRID THORNTON
2018
SUE MILLIKEN
2017
DEBORAH MAILMAN
2016
CLAUDIA KARVAN
2008
Health ledger (posthumously)
2007
David Stratton
2006
Jack thompson
2005
David bradbury
2004
Geoffrey rush
2003
Anthony Buckley
2002
Jan chapman
2001
Robin Anderson & bob Connolly
2000
Bryan brown
1999
Bob ellis
1998
Rolf de heer
1997
John Seale, ACS, ASC.
1996
Dr. George Miller
1995
Gillian Armstrong
1994
Fred Schepisi
1993
PAUL COZ
The chauvel committee
The Chauvel Award Committee features four of Australia’s most respected film industry members. Melanie Coombs, producer of the Academy Award® winner Harvie Krumpet and film industry veteran, actor and producer Alan Finney, Professor Emeritus Bruce Molloy, and screen distribution heavyweight Michael Selwyn are the esteemed 2024 Chauvel Committee members.