The Producers

CHARLIE HILL-SMITH first encountered the wider world as a teenage exchange student with local families in Indonesia. He developed a deep love for travel, grass roots arts activism, anti-colonial politics and the magic of storytelling. After a stint as a stand-up comedian and venue owner in Adelaide, he fell into film, to make Hong Kong Fooey & the Great Chinese Takeaway in 1997. Wokabout West Papua in 2000 led to Indonesia - Art, Activism and Rock n’ Roll for SBS in 2003. In 2005 he was camera operator on SBS Independent’s The Making of Ten Canoes. His first feature documentary, Strange Birds in Paradise - a West Papuan Story traced his evolving understanding of Indonesian militarism and the role of art in the resistance of neocolonialism. Motorkite Dreaming springs from his love of the Australian bush that formed him as a child, and his yearning to connect with Aboriginal Australia.

JOHN CHERRY is a director and award-winning producer who established social issue film and television production company, Intafusion Films, in 2003. John produced multi-AFI nominated STRANGE BIRDS IN PARADISE (2009, SBS/France Televisions) which premiered at IDFA and won the IF Award for Best Documentary. In 2012, he directed half-hour arts documentary HIDDEN HISTORY for SBS TV before producing and co-directing 2013 feature documentary THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMS for Screen Australia’s Signature Documentary Fund which premiered at Sydney Film Festival. In 2014, John was a field director on OUTBACK TRUCKERS (Discovery/7mate), toured nationally as the embedded filmmaker on Damian Callinan’s comedy show ROAD TRIP and in 2015, directed the “Keera Vale” episode of 7x60’ prime-time series RESTORATION AUSTRALIA for ABC Television. John produced MOTORKITE DREAMING, a feature documentary which premieres mid-2016 with a 5x26’ series for Red Bull TV, SBS TWO, and NITV.

Making The Film

Making Motorkite Dreaming was true adventure filmmaking, traversing some of the wildest terrain in the world. The film was documented by a crew of six, using three cameras on the ground, and up to ten Go Pros, mounted on both the microlights and the support vehicles. They filmed for up to sixteen hours a day throughout nine weeks. In the Australian outback, remote as it gets, the crew were totally off-grid, battling dust, rain, and navigating crocodile-infested swamps to keep up with 2 very fast moving microlights!