Sunday Arts Magazine

Natalie Miller AO is an icon of the Australian film industry, and one of its most admired
and accomplished leaders. Over the past 40 years Natalie has firmly established herself in the world of arthouse films
and in doing so become a pioneer for women in the industry and beyond. Her role as an advocate for women in the
industry inspired the establishment of the Natalie Miller Fellowship in 2011. She is celebrating her life’s work with the
publication of her memoir Projecting Natalie Miller, a beautiful coffee-table book that is filled with personal
recollections, photos, newspaper articles and interviews with family members, plus tributes penned by some of the
industry’s most respected leaders and movie directors including Gillian Anderson, Joel Pearlman, Alan Finney and
Fred Schepisi.
The book provides touching firsthand accounts from Natalie, her husband, and her children, as they recount her
humble beginnings in their lounge room, all the way to the glittering lights of Cannes Film Festival each year – and
how she managed life as a trailblazing working mother, who always put them first . The book also includes deeply
personal accounts from Natalie and her business partner of more than 30 years, Barry Peak, on the establishment of
two of Australia’s best known arthouse cinemas, the Longford Cinema and Cinema Nova.
Natalie says, “I have been blessed to meet and work with so many extraordinary people – directors, producers,
writers, actors, film distributors, exhibitors and sales agents. This book began as a throw away comment to my
publisher Deborah Marks about how everyone says I should write a book. So, several years later after many long
meetings and endless searches for memorabilia – here we are. Ultimately this is a legacy for my family, but it is also a
study of independent cinema and proof that women can juggle business and motherhood – I did it before we even had
fax machines!”
Born in Elwood into a traditional Jewish immigrant family, Natalie Sharpe after graduating from school she studied a
Bachelor of Arts at Melbourne University. In 1962 she married textile businessman Henry Miller. It was while she was
working as a publicist for the Melbourne International Film Festival, a position she held for 17 years, that she saw a
gap in the market for arthouse and foreign films – and in 1967 she established her film distribution company, Sharmill
Films. She went onto own and manage the Longford Cinema in South Yarra for 17 years, which specialised in
exhibiting independent foreign and Australian art house films, before its closure in 2001. In 1993, Natalie co-founded
the Cinema Nova complex in Carlton, which is now one of the leading independent cinemas in Australia. In 2003,
Natalie was awarded the prestigious Chevalier des Arts et des Letres (Knight of the Order of Arts & Letters) for her
services in promoting French cinema. Her immense contribution to the Australian and global screen industry has seen
her the Order of Australia (Officer and Medal). She was also a founding member of the Australian Centre for the
Moving image (ACMI), where she served on the board for eight years and she also sat on the Course Advisory
Committee of the Victorian College of the Arts.