Ian Walker

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Ian Walker has dedicated his film-making career to making the “ordinary” extra-ordinary and the “real” surreal, a genre he describes as “magic realist” documentary. He can give a serious twist to light-hearted subject – and, with serious topics, adds intelligent humour and stylish visuals. He is the principal of the boutique factual production house Magic|Real Picture Company.

His first film as producer, the feature documentary Naked On The Inside, made its debut at the Zurich Film Festival in 2007. At home, it was nominated for a Dendy Award at the 2007 Sydney Film Festival. During 2008, he co-produced Rainman Goes To RocKwiz and was executive producer on the eco-detective story, Feral Peril.
In recent years, his directing work has had a distinctly “gothic” streak. In 2007 he wrote and directed Over My Dead Body for ABC-TV Science, which uses hyper-real imagery, a narrator who is dead and a wry and dispassionate tone to ask some tricky questions: who wants you when you’re dead, for what parts and what purpose? Ian was co-director on the a six-part ABC series Dust to Dust and, before that, part of the team behind ABC-TV’s A Case For The Coroner. His latest macabre offering is the feature documentary I, Psychopath – a gruelling undertaking in which Ian goes on the road with a suspected psychopath…a journey into diagnosis that takes the audience deep inside both the subject’s and the director’s mind.
Ian’s first one-hour television documentary, The Hacktivists, exposed the secret world of internet activism. It has now been sold in six territories and screened at dozens of festivals around the world. His other directing credits include episodes of the highly-praised SBS series Two of Us. Internationally, he is best known as writer of the much-loved half-hour documentary film Men & Their Sheds: A Love Story.

Ian has a Master of Arts in Film & Television (Documentary) from the Australian Film & Television School. His AFTRS graduation film The Naked Lady Vanishes won several local and international awards and was broadcast on ABC-TV in 2000 to considerable controversy and critical acclaim. Before his TV career, Ian worked for many years as a newsreader on the ABC’s youth station Triple J and as a documentary-maker, journalist and producer for various programs on ABC Radio National.