John L Simpson: Mapping the Terrain of Independent Film Distribution

While the rest of the Australian film industry is lamenting hard times, producer and distributor John L Simpson is refusing to be depressed or immobilised. Instead, he’s enthusiastically mapping out a new way for Australian filmmakers to find audiences for their films – even if that means screening in tiny rural towns, community halls, churches, prisons or oil-rigs. It’s this plan – to take the film Men’s Group on a national regional tour, and in the process create a blueprint for others – that has won Simpson the 2008 AFI Fellowship. The $25,000 grant will assist him in his pioneering distribution venture. Directed by Michael Joy, and co-written by Joy and Simpson, Men’s Group is a low-budget improvised drama about a group of strangers who meet once a week to talk about their lives. The film has wowed festival audiences and critics, and among other accolades, it has received the 2007 DIGI SPAA Award, and this year’s Inside Film Awards for Best Feature Film, Best Script and Best Actor (Grant Dodwell). Simpson speaks a mile a minute and it’s clear he’s full of excitement about receiving the AFI Fellowship, and the prospect of taking his film out of the inner-city art-houses. With a background in theatre and film (he was a producer of 2007’s Razzle Dazzle), Simpson’s first foray into distribution came with Dee McLachlan’s low-budget thriller The Jammed. His newly formed distribution company, Titan View, picked up that film and saved it from a straight-to-DVD fate. Right now, Simpson is keen to get to work on his regional screenings map for Men’s Group. Here he talks to the AFI’s editor Rochelle Siemienowicz about his plans to empower other filmmakers to adapt to the new terrain of independent film distribution in Australia.