Jimmy Barnes documentary gets Screen Australia funding

CJZ Productions’ Jimmy Barnes’ Working Class Boy is one of 12 documentaries receiving $3.5 million funding from Screen Australia.

The feature, which will run on Seven Network later this year, will be based on Barnes’ best seller of the same name.

It covers James Dixon Swan’s turbulent childhood in Glasgow to the immigrant suburbs of Adelaide where the family came for a better life but struggled with dwindling money, alcohol, fraying tempers, violence and despair.

The screen adaption is produced by Toni Malone (Pauline Hanson: Please Explain!), executive produced by Andrew Farrell (Marry Me Marry My Family) and Michael Cordell (Vitamania), and directed and co-produced by Mark Joffe (Love Child).

Barnes’ is the only music-themed project on the list.

Funding has come from two schemes run by Screen Australia, the documentary producer and documentary commissioned programs.

The Documentary Producer program gives producers foundational funding for their projects.

The Documentary Commissioned program supports production costs for television and video on demand programs.

Of the $3.5m total, $850,000 was allocated to the producer program and $2.66m to the commissioned program

The others are a new season of SBS’s Filthy Rich & Homeless, feral bull catching in the Northern Territory, using a dead body in artworks, an immersive experience to screen in dome cinemas and planetariums about the blue whale, and discrimination faced by people with disabilities in Bolivia.

There is also a look at real-life Australian experiences where things have gone horribly wrong, a SBS-headed four part series on pivotal moments of Australia’s history, a three part SBS series My Family Secret, Australia’s unique wildlife, the three-part fall out of an insidious cult, and Screentime’s The Secret Life of Four Year Olds for Network Ten.