Our Next Hyphenate Corrie Chen

Writer, director and Hi4H July 2018 guest host Corrie Chen

If you've been paying close attention to Australia screen culture, you know who Corrie Chen is. And if you haven't, please remember that you heard about her here first so we can bask in her current and future reflected glory.

Corrie's science fiction short film Reg Makes Contact received an AACTA nomination for Best Short Short Fiction, and an Australian Directors Guild nomination for Best Direction in a Short Film. She was then selected to shadow directors on the Emmy award-winning Nowhere Boys, the AACTA award-winning mini-series Peter Allen, and the final season of the cult hit The Leftovers.

She was the director and executive producer on the acclaimed SBS On Demand series Homecoming Queens, and has directed episodes of Sisters for Network Ten and Mustang FC for the ABC. She is currently co-writing her first feature film Empty Empire, set in China's famed “ghost cities”. And if you can believe it, we actually left a heap of stuff out of this bio.

But all of those achievements and accolades are about to fade into the background of Corrie's CV as her new exciting role takes centre stage: that of Hell Is For Hyphenates guest host!

Which filmmaker has Corrie selected to discuss on the show?

None other than Nora Ephron!

To convey the full force of Nora Ephron's work would require more space than we have here. She interned in JFK's White House, took Newsweek to court for sexual discrimination, and wrote for Monocle, Esquire, the New York Post and Cosmopolitan. She eventually turned her eye to film, receiving multiple Oscar nominations for her screenplays.

She wrote the biographical drama Silkwood, the autobiographical drama Heartburn, and the ur-romcom When Harry Met Sally. As director, she debuted with the stand-up comic drama This Is My Life, followed it up with the classic Sleepless In Seattle, and went on to direct box office hits including Michael, You've Got Mail and Julie & Julia.

Almost every romantic comedy of the last thirty years has been trying to replicate what Ephron did, and almost every one of them has barely come close. So how did Ephron land on a winning formula? What hidden gems reside in the recesses of her filmography? And what is it about Ephron's films that so inspires Corrie?

Join us on July 31 when we find out!

Our next filmmaker of the month, Nora Ephron

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