Theatre, music and moving pictures, Canberra creative Dianna Nixon is a master of all trades when it comes to performance and productions. The managing director of Music Theatre Projects Ltd has embarked on a thrilling new adventure – to make her first full-length feature film.

Step one: a screenplay. Ms Nixon has enrolled in a six-month development program through Screen Pod Canberra. Through workshops, meetings and collaborations with industry experts and other creatives, participants should emerge with a screenplay ready to pitch to production companies for funding support.

“It’s really building on a lifetime of storytelling and making work and it ties in very much with the other stories I am wanting to tell through my company,” she says.

With the working title of Burnima, Ms Nixon was granted permission to film at the historic homestead of the same name, located in Bombala NSW. Built in the late 1800s, the Gothic Victorian residence has a rich history, which fits perfectly with Ms Nixon’s love of rural architecture.

“The former owner, who also has a love of history, did a lot of work with this property to get it back to its former glory,” she says. “He reinstated the house with actual furniture that had been sold off; he went round to auctions and bought it back, basically set the house up with original furniture.”

The new owners are working hard to reinstate Burnima to its Victorian-era glory and Ms Dixon knew the house and location were perfect for her concept.

“It has an incredible actual history, but I’ll be locating the story in the present day though centred around a Victoriana house party that happens at that house,” she says.

Describing the piece as a contemporary road trip/ghost film, Ms Nixon plans to weave her own personal experiences into the screenplay. She says female-oriented issues will be highlighted, as well as those that are in-built in the Canberra region and those that tell of the times we live in.

“The tension between regenerative agriculture and traditional industrial farming, I want to capture some of the tensions that we saw between the protestors that were living around the district; the anti-vaxxers and protestors and their activism against Covid. I’ve also got a story thread about the dangers on our roads,” she says.

As the piece is still in development, Ms Nixon didn’t want to elaborate on the details regarding plot lines. She says the characters will be relatable and like those of people we know, while the story they tell will be broad and engaging.

“There are weaves of different subcultures because we’ve got this big set piece at this Victorian homestead where there’ll be a party. During that party, will be time to actually demonstrate the diversity and the interesting kind of characters that live here.”

Wanting to move away from clichés, Ms Nixon says that many films set in rural Australia incorporate similar language, accents, and use of terminology. She wants to break away from the horror, zombie or outback films that seem to dominate rural filmmaking, and break down the misconceptions about living not just in the Canberra region but in rural Australia as a whole.

“Being somebody who grew up in the country and has observed for, really, my 61 years the way that rural stories are told, I think there’s some work to do on actually being a bit more faithful to what’s really here, the richness and diversity of what’s here,” she says.

For more about the production of the ‘Burnima’ film, visit musictheatreprojects.com

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