The Byron Kennedy Award is an annual film and television award presented by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) to Australian filmmakers.

History

The award was named after Byron Kennedy (18 August 1949 – 17 July 1983), an Australian film producer. From 1984 to 2010, the award was handed out by the Australian Film Institute (AFI), the Academy's parent organisation, at the annual Australian Film Institute Awards (known as the AFI Awards). When the AFI launched the Academy in 2011, it changed the annual ceremony to the AACTA Awards, with the award being a continuum of the AFI Byron Kennedy Award. On the 10th anniversary of the establishment of AACTA in 2020, the Byron Kennedy Award was selected to celebrate low-budget independent films. As the nominees were announced, AACTA wrote that the award would "recognise an Australian film that illustrates the resourcefulness, inventiveness, originality and excellence that Byron Kennedy embodied through his genre-defining work with George Miller on Mad Max". , no further awards have been announced since 2020.

Description

The Byron Kennedy Award is presented by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA), a non-profit organisation whose aim is "to identify, award, promote and celebrate Australia's greatest achievements in film and television." It recognises a person in their early career for "outstanding creative enterprise within the film and television industries... whose work embodies the qualities of Byron Kennedy: innovation, vision and the relentless pursuit of excellence." Recommendations for recipients are made by the general public, but the AFI and Academy may also select further candidates without the need for an entry. The award includes a A$10,000 cash prize. It may be awarded to makers of film or television shows. The award is presented at the annual AACTA Awards Ceremony, which hand out accolades for technical achievements in feature film, television, documentaries, and short films.

Recipients