Matt Richards is an Australian director whose work spans short films and documentaries, TV commercials, branded content and music videos. He holds a Master of Film & Television (Narrative) from the Victorian College of the Arts (2011).
Matt’s narrative short films have been screened in competition at over 100 film festivals, licensed for feature film anthologies, collected more than 50 awards, and been streamed online by millions of viewers worldwide.
His short documentaries for the NGV (2014-), Australia’s most visited gallery, have featured internationally renowned artists, designers, illustrators and architects, including KAWS, Ai Weiwei, Oki Sato, Yayoi Kusama, David Shrigley, Cai Guo-Qiang, Alicja Kwade, Ivan Durrant, Hoda Afshar, John Wolseley, Shaun Tan and Alison Lester as well as fashion designers Viktor & Rolf and Jean Paul Gaultier.
In 2018, Matt was chosen by the Australian Directors’ Guild to join the ‘Ones To Watch’ Directors Program at the Screen Forever conference, and selected to pitch at the Melbourne International Film Festival’s 37ºSouth Market. He’s also landed Film Victoria-supported director’s placements on the Matchbox Pictures series CLICKBAIT (2020) for Netflix/NBCUniversal and the ABC TV series TOMORROW WHEN THE WAR BEGAN (2016).
Among his directorial highlights are
The Disappearance Of Willie Bingham
2015
A short psychological horror financed by Screen Australia (Hot Shots program, 2014), which won 20 awards, screened competitively at 55 festivals in 19 countries and has been licensed to two anthology feature film projects.
Developed from the short story The Wilbur Bledsoe Amputations by American writer Michael L. Fawcett, we pitched the project to Screen Australia for two consecutive years and were successfully awarded $70,000 to produce the short film. The film has sparked heated online debates about the merits of capital punishment and continues to earn royalties across numerous streaming platforms
Rabbit
2014
A crowd-funded short drama, which received Special Recognition for Direction (San Francisco International Festival of Short Films) and selection for Melbourne International Film Festival's acclaimed emerging director program, Accelerator.
Matt was brought onto this project by writer/actor Nicholas Denton and producer Ariel Thomas from Patch Adams Productions, who were seeking an experienced director with a unique slant. Matt and Nicholas developed two additional drafts of the script to get it production-ready.
First Contact
2012
A crowd-funded short drama, winner of eight awards, which screened competitively at 30 festivals in 16 countries.
First Contact was Matt's master’s project at the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts in 2011. His team successfully crowdfunded $6,500 for production and filmed on a remote salt lake in northern Victoria.
The film won four VCA awards, including Best Masters By Coursework Production and Matt subsequently traveled to festivals, presenting it in competition in Georgia, Palm Springs, NYC, Tel Aviv, and Beijing.
The Super 8 Diaries
2004–2007
A self-funded, four-year music documentary on the underground Australian rock/punk community.
The Super8 Diaries offer a snapshot in time of Australia’s independent rock scene. The live footage, filmed entirely on Super8 cameras with interviews captured on whatever digital cameras were available, showcases 11 bands: My Disco, Love of Diagrams, Tucker B’s, Colditz Glider, Mukaizake, Aleks and The Ramps, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Bang! Bang! Aids!, Die! Die! Die!, The Tigers, and Baseball.
This self-initiated project began in 2004, driven solely by the Trainwreck 20/20 teams passion for the live music scene and DIY ethos we were witnessing. To raise funds to complete the project, we hosted a massive 12-hour warehouse gig in 2007.
The Super8 Diaries officially launched with another huge 12-hour show in Melbourne in January 2008, before we packed everyone into a van and drove to Sydney for another warehouse launch.
During the 2020/21 lockdowns the entire project was remastered and compiled into a single 205-minute film. There are now 20+hours of additional live footage available from the fundraiser and launch shows.
Cameras | Canon 1014, Canon 512XL, Bauer S105XL
Stock | Kodak Tri-X Reversal 7278, Eastman Ektachrome 7240
Meart – The Semi Living Artist
2000-2004
“MEART – The Semi Living Artist” is a geographically detached, bio-cybernetic research and development project exploring aspects of creativity and artistry in the age of new biological technologies.
A collaborative film/science project by the biological arts lab SymbioticA, exhibited in Austria, Russia, Spain, Australia, and the USA.
During Matt's final year of film studies at the Western Australian School of Art Design and Media he also completed a residency at SymbioticA where he filmed dozens of interviews with artists, philosophers, theologians, and academics.
Matt spent months editing late at night, surrounded by plasticised body parts in the basement of the anatomy department at the University of Western Australia. Subsequently, he was invited to travel with the completed work to exhibit and document at the 2001 Ars Electronica festival in Linz, Austria.
This project was instrumental in sparking Matt's interest in the impact of art making on a global stage.
Let's start something together, Matt'll put the batteries on charge.
hello@mattrichards.tv
(+61) 421 762 427
Level 1/274 Barkly St, Brunswick VIC 3056