Australian director Jocelyn Moorhouse first burst onto the international film scene with Proof, her 1991 directorial debut. A searching and refreshingly original black comedy about a blind photographer (Hugo Weaving) and his relationships with his obsessive housekeeper (Genevieve Picot) and a friendly dishwasher (Russell Crowe), the film earned instant critical acclaim in Australia and abroad. The winner of six Australian Film Institute Awards -- including Best Screenplay and Best Director for Moorhouse -- Proof also won numerous prizes at international film festivals from Cannes to Tokyo, effectively announcing its writer/director as a new and exciting talent.
A native of Melbourne, Moorhouse began making Proof in the mid-'80s. Fascinated all her life with blindness, photography, and in her words "having a reality without visual knowledge," she initially envisioned the film as a short, but decided to make it into a feature after being told that she wouldn't be able to secure funding for a short piece. It took five years before Proof went into production and when it did, it was with a 1.1 million dollar budget jointly provided by Film Victoria and the Australian Film Commission. Shot in Melbourne over six weeks in the winter of 1990, Proof was first seen by a Cannes Film Festival advisor who was surveying possible Australian entries for competition; the film was initially rejected but later accepted after Moorhouse made some cuts.
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