Shining light: The Aussie woman heading up Hollywood's oldest guild

The Age

02-06-2025

Mandy Walker was 15 when she realised what she wanted to do with her life.
Her mother had taken her to see an obscure Spanish movie, The Spirit of the Beehive, and Mandy was mesmerised.
'I remember thinking, 'Why is this so different from an Australian film? Why do I feel like this place and this story is in a different country? How did they make me understand this sense of place?' And then I started looking into it, what a cinematographer does.'
For more than 30 years, Walker has been doing what a cinematographer does, picking up a raft of peer-voted awards, and BAFTA and Oscar nominations and an AACTA Award win (all for Elvis) along the way. And last weekend, she collected perhaps the greatest honour of her career to date – being elected president of the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers.
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She is the first Australian and the first woman to hold the position and she is, she admits, immensely proud on both counts. But it's on the gender front that she most wants to make her mark.
'I've been part of a minority as a woman cinematographer,' says Melbourne-born Walker. 'I think it's still less than 10 per cent are women, so I feel like I'm a good person to champion that cause.'
Founded in 1919, the ASC is one of the oldest professional bodies in Hollywood. It is 'neither a labour union nor a guild', but rather something like an exclusive club. 'Membership is by invitation only,' its website proclaims, 'extended to directors of photography who have demonstrated outstanding ability with distinguished credits in the industry and good personal character.'
Despite the American bit, its 471 members come from around the world, though Walker identifies diversity as another area she wants to improve. 'It's still, like, 80 per cent white men who do my job,' she says.