AustLit
BiographyHistory
Bio changes summary
Script-writer and director.
Bennett's earliest credits are 'docudramas': the 1983 work Cattle King (likely inspired by or adapted from Ion Idriess's book of the same name), based on the life of Sidney Kidman (and financed by Dick Smith, an admirer of Kidman's) and the 1984 work Shipwrecked, an account of yachtsman Bill Belcher's shipwrecking on Middleton Reef, to the north of Lord Howe Island.
He followed these two films with the low-budget feature film A Street to Die, about a Vietnam veteran battling for recognition of the serious health effects of exposure to military-use defoliants.
In 2018, Bennett released his first novel, Palace of Fires.
Further Reading:
Morris, Joan. 'Light Hearted Look at Polar Continent', Canberra Times, 21 August 1988, p.22.
'Story about Australia's Largest Landholder', Canberra Times, 12 March 1984, p.21.
Warden, Ian. '"Shipwrecked" a Delight to Watch', Canberra Times, 29 October 1984, p.3S.
Most Referenced Works
Awards for Works
-
form
y
In a Savage Land
( dir. Bill Bennett
)
Australia
:
Bill Bennett Productions
,
1999
7915904
1999
single work
film/TV
historical fiction
'Soon after getting married, and just after the outbreak of the Second World War, Dr Phillip Spence (Martin Donovan) and his former student Evelyn (Maya Stange) set out for Papua New Guinea to study the culture of the Trobriand Islanders. The two anthropologists intend to further the work others have done on the sexuality and social organisation of the matrilineal society. Tensions quickly emerge between them and the few other Westerners in the area. Their relationship worsens after Evelyn unwittingly transgresses several cultural taboos; Phillip is concerned that her behaviour is negatively affecting his work by changing their relationship with the locals.
'Evelyn pays Mick (Rufus Sewell), a Western pearl trader, to take her to a village of headhunters in the muddy rainforests of the Papua New Guinea mainland so she can get out of Phillip’s way and prove herself with fieldwork of her own. The attraction grows between Mick and Evelyn but she is determined to stay on alone despite the harsh living conditions and the aggression her new cohabitants show towards her. Mick arrives earlier than planned to fetch her because Phillip is dying from dysentery back in the Trobriand Islands. After his death she adopts the mourning habits of the village women by living in a cage. Mick watches over her and, when she returns to her old self, their relationship develops as Japanese soldiers move into the area.'
Source: Australian Screen.
- 2000 nominated Film Critics Circle of Australia — Best Original Screenplay
-
form
y
Kiss or Kill
( dir. Bill Bennett
)
Australia
:
Bill Bennett Productions
,
1997
6304306
1997
single work
film/TV
thriller
crime
Al and Nikki, inseparable since they met in juvenile detention, make a living through petty crime: Nikki picks up men in bars, drugs them, and then helps Al rob them. But when their latest mark dies and they find that he's carrying a videotape of a prominent footballer engaged in sexual activites with an underage boy, they flee Adelaide and head across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth, pursued by the footballer and the police. But the strain of the journey brings up the traumas of Nikki's past, and the people they encounter begin to turn up dead ...
-
form
y
A Street to Die
( dir. Bill Bennett
)
Australia
:
Mermaid Beach Productions
,
1985
7921567
1985
single work
film/TV
'The true story of Col Turner, a Vietnam veteran who took on a Government, and won. Col Turner returned from Vietnam to discover he had cancer. He lived in a War Service home and all his neighbours were veterans who were also having problems. Col soon began to suspect that Agent Orange was to blame, and so he set out to do something about it.'
Source:
[Television guide], Canberra Times, 18 August 1986, p.24.
- 1985 nominated Australian Film Institute Awards — Best Original Screenplay
- 1985 nominated Australian Film Institute Awards — Best Film