STAFF & BOARD

Natasha Gadd is the current CEO/Creative Director of the Australian International Documentary Conference with a passion for documentary and factual storytelling spanning two decades. She was most recently AIDC’s Partnerships and Industry Development Manager, where she oversaw the industry development  program that unlocked over 1.4 million in project and professional development funding for AIDC delegates across a 3-year period. In 2005, she co-founded Daybreak Films, a Melbourne based production company committed to creating independent and engaging screen content. Natasha’s debut feature documentary, Words From the City was nominated for five AFI Awards and her follow up feature, Murundak: Songs of Freedom, received the Grand Prix – FIFO, Best Documentary – Valladolid International Film Festival, and the United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Award. She has also made a number of short documentaries for SBS, ABC and Foxtel, including Anatomy: Muscle, for which she received an Australian Directors Guild Best Director award. Natasha has held leadership positions across a number of leading Australian screen organisations including Cinema Programs and Public Programs Manager at the Australian Center for the Moving Image, Festival Director of the REAL: Life on Film festival and board member of the National Film and Sound Archive. 

Alex has worked in Program, Event, Marketing and General Manager roles with Open Channel Melbourne International Film Festival, Twentieth Century Fox, Cinema Nova, Lumiere Cinemas, and most recently, Palace Cinemas. He is the founder of Melbourne Filmoteca: Spanish, Latin American & Portuguese Film Group; as well as the Melbourne Latin American Film Festival (2004-2007).

At Open Channel he developed a suite of professional and project development programs for emerging screen practitioners including the inaugural Generation Next Documentary Conference, regular discussion panels and networking sessions; and production initiatives delivered in collaboration with Screen Australia, Film Victoria, local government, philanthropic and other partners.

A Canberra native, Alex completed a Bachelor of Arts (Art History & Curatorship) at the Australian National University, before moving to Melbourne and completing Honours in Cinema Studies at La Trobe University.

Chris is a media, communications and marketing professional with extensive experience in the media, arts and not-for-profit sectors. As Marketing & Communications Manager for AIDC, he is responsible for brand management, audience development, market positioning, communications strategy and APAC region engagement. He has also worked as Industry Programmer and CrossCurrents International Fund assessor for the Hot Docs Industry conference in Toronto, Canada, and has research interests in documentary marketplace and pitching forum dynamics. His prior experience includes three years as Marketing Manager for the Melbourne Fringe Festival, a tenure that included the event’s most successful staging in 30 years in 2014, teaching in arts and creative management for the University of Melbourne, editing a weekly music, arts, and film magazine, and freelancing in music and entertainment marketing. He studied screen production and writing at Griffith University and QUT – resulting in a short documentary about the auto towing industry and a Channel [V] Clip of the Week music video – and holds a Master of Global Media Communication degree from the University of Melbourne.

Originally from Perth, Sam moved to Melbourne in 2014 and found herself drawn to creative organisations, festivals and communities. For the past six years she has been working in design studios in management roles, using her finance and organisational skills to oversee projects and people. Sam moved to London in 2018 and spent the last couple of years working with a studio that placed art and design schemes into hospitals around London. Since returning to Melbourne she has been focused on finding a creative organisation that she feels is again making a positive impact both culturally and socially and is very happy to have found a home with the AIDC team.

Alice McShane is a seasoned film programmer and arts professional. She came to AIDC from Human Rights Arts & Film Festival, where she served as Program Manager from 2019 until 2022. She has worked with screen organisations across Australia including SXSW Sydney, MIFF, ACMI, and is a board member of the Melbourne Women in Film Festival – a culmination of her efforts and dedication to the festival sector. Alice has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Screen Studies from the University of Melbourne. She is a passionate advocate for the power of nonfiction storytelling and ethical filmmaking, and is thrilled to be returning to the AIDC team as 2024 Conference Programmer. She is excited to be collaborating with industry leaders to champion the sector, celebrate craft, and pay tribute to the change-making power of storytelling.

Developer, facilitator and producer for the screen arts, Laurrie Mansfield (née Brannigan-Onato) returns for a second year as First Nations Producer at AIDC 2024. Laurrie is a proud Aboriginal-Filipino-Irish and Bi+ / Gender Queer individual who has worked with leading organisations both locally and globally, including Screen Australia (First Nations, Enterprise, Content, Online), Netflix (Production and ANZ Grow Creative), Australians in Film (AiF), Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC), Arts Cultural Exchange (A.C.E.), Screen NSW, Curious Works, Screenworks and Sydney Film Festival. Presently, Laurrie splits their time between producing at GARUWA, the 100% Aboriginal-owned, multidisciplinary creative agency, and freelancing as an assessor, developer, facilitator, programmer, and emerging writer.