Grants in the literature category were worth a total of $827,983, with a massive $40,270 awarded to Crismani, a writer and filmmaker who grew up in Coober Pedy, South Australia.
He has a background of Italian, German and Scottish within his lineage.
After studying filmmaking and creative writing at the University of South Australia, Crismani emerged as a freelance filmmaker, writer and composer.
His poems and short stories have been published in anthologies and literary journals in Australia, New Zealand and Poland.
He has had several films screened on National Indigenous TV (NITV), including his documentary about his grandfather, The Panther Within, for which he was also nominated for an AWGIE Award.
His short film 440, about an Aboriginal man in a corporate world who goes on an urban walkabout, screened at the Winda Film Festival in Sydney 2008.
Crismani was the 2018 Adelaide Festival of Literature award winner of the Tangkanungku Pintyanthi Fellowship, to develop a fictional re-imagining of his own ancestral history, inspired by the life story of his grandfather, champion boxer Joe Murray, known in the ring as “The Black Panther”.
It is speculated that this is the project to which Crismani will dedicate himself with the awarded funding, although this is unconfirmed.
Crismani’s work is primarily concerned with contemporary life as a descendant of Aboriginal and migrant lineage.
It’s a unique perspective within multicultural Australia.
“I would hope that I bring to light part of Australia’s history that shows the strength, resilience and intelligence of Aboriginal people in overcoming massive obstacles to survive,” Crismani said in an interview with Aud News.
Other notable literary recipients in the latest round of Australia Council for the Arts Grants include Ivy Alvarez, the New Zealand-based Filipino Australian poet and 2015 Miles Franklin Award Winner novelist Sofie Laguna.
