In 1998 Mark directed his short play, ‘The Poets’, at Belvoir Street Theatre. Spurred on by the experience, he adapted his feature film script, ‘The Nothing Men’, for a stage production at Newtown Theatre. Mark also directed and acted in this critically acclaimed production.
In 1999 Mark directed his 30 min short film, ‘The Gas Man’. He cast Australia’s most notorious juvenile prisoners in lead roles and went behind the bars of a maximum-security prison to direct it.
In 2008, after years of Hollywood clambered for his feature film script, ‘The Nothing Men’, Mark decided to make it in Sydney. ‘The Nothing Men’ pioneered the new technology RED camera in Australia and Mark was only the second director in the world to use RED behind Oscar-winning director, Steven Soderbergh.
Mark was invited to Hollywood to screen the film, where it received a standing ovation. ‘The Nothing Men’ caught the attention of David Valdes, producer of 3 Oscar-winning films. David raved about Mark’s talent not only as a writer but also as a director.
David set up a meeting for Mark with LA producer David Ladd to talk about Mark’s next project, ‘Descendance’. David Ladd immediately came on board as Producer. Mark has since honed the script in readiness for production.
Destiny calls many, but few have the courage to answer. Some have to be dragged. So it is with Kurung's story.
Wrenched from the blistering heat and dust of the Australian outback, Kurung and his beloved sister Dell embark on a journey that will take them into an underworld of pain and sorrow and the kind of despair that tests the soul to breaking point, only to find an unlikely chance of redemption and a destination so extraordinary, so dazzling, that it couldn't possibly have happened… Only it did.
This is the real life story of how an Aboriginal man, stolen from his family as a child, raised in an orphanage, and fighting every kind of rejection and prejudice, helps build one of the greatest indigenous dance troupes in the world - then with his sister Dell at his side, meets the Queen of England… Yes. This is one of those stories where only the impossible is true.