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WATERSTREET

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CanvasFilm is running a fundraising campaign to help bring the Waterstreet documentary to completion.

Donations are 100 percent tax deductible via the Documentary Australia Foundation.

 

SYNOPSIS

‘Waterstreet’ is a feature length documentary exploring the history and evolution of Australian culture and identity, through the rise and fall of one of Australia’s most prominent legal figures, Charles Waterstreet.

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Five years in the making, the documentary captures in often shockingly intimate and confronting detail, Waterstreet’s decline from his place as one of Australia's most recognisable, celebrated and successful criminal barristers, precipitated by allegations of improper conduct, bankruptcy and the inevitable toll of a life lived to excess - and without consequence.

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Through the exploration of Waterstreet's life and meteoric rise to prominence, the film also examines and investigates the systems, structures and characteristics that make up our unique Australian history and the fast-changing social and political climate of recent years, with the intention of examining who we are, where came from and where we are going.

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STORY

‘Waterstreet’ is a feature length documentary examining the fall of one of Australia’s most celebrated criminal
barristers,
Charles Waterstreet.
Three years in the making, the documentary explores in intimate and confronting detail Waterstreet’s decline from
an in-demand criminal barrister precipitated by allegations of improper conduct, a very public bankruptcy, and the
inevitable toll of a life lived to ‘excess – but never further’.
We follow his journey from its humble small-town origins as the eldest child of a staunchly Catholic family growing up
in post-war regional Albury in the 1950s. A family of publicans, the young Waterstreet would spend his formative
years surrounded by misfits, drunks and outcasts, bearing the lifelong scars of an absent and fiercely alcoholic
mother at a time where ‘mental health’ was a phrase confined to the halls of overcrowded sanatoriums.
Blessed with a natural intellect, wit and charm that would propel his eventual pilgrimage to Sydney, he quickly
became one of Australia’s rising legal stars and part of the ‘bourgeoise bohemian brethren’ of artists, entertainers
and intellectuals that were considered the custodians of art and culture in the 70s and 80s.
‘At the height of his professional career, Waterstreet battled addiction in all its forms - alcohol, drugs, sex and any
vice that he could lay his hands on, all the while fighting and often winning the unwinnable cases that captured the
nation’s attention, cementing his reputation as a resourceful ‘Larrikin of Law’.
It was a fast-living heady life of sex, drugs and excess that culminated in his immortalisation as the inspiration for the
fictional barrister Cleaver Green, on ABC TVs, ‘Rake’. Further notoriety would follow when his portrait won the
coveted Archibald Prize.

 Waterstreet's journey begins as the eldest child of a staunchly Catholic family growing up in post-war regional Australia in the 1950s.

 

A family of publicans, the young Waterstreet would spend his formative years surrounded by misfits, drunks and outcasts, bearing the lifelong scars of an absent and fiercely alcoholic mother at a time where ‘mental health’ was a phrase confined to the halls of overcrowded sanatoriums.


Blessed with a natural intellect, wit and charm that would propel his eventual pilgrimage to Sydney, he quickly became one of Australia’s rising legal stars and part of the ‘bourgeoise bohemian brethren’ of artists, entertainers and intellectuals that were considered the custodians of art and culture in the 70s and 80s.


‘At the height of his professional career, Waterstreet battled addiction in all its forms - alcohol, drugs, sex and any vice that he could lay his hands on, all the while fighting and often winning the unwinnable cases that captured the nation’s attention, cementing his reputation as a resourceful ‘Larrikin of Law’.


It was a fast-living heady life of sex, drugs and excess that culminated in his immortalisation as the inspiration for the fictional barrister Cleaver Green, on ABC TVs, ‘Rake’.

 

Further notoriety would follow when his portrait won the coveted Archibald Prize.

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But success would be short-lived, as allegations of improper conduct resulted in him being tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, swept up in the scrutiny of the newly-mobilised #metoo movement which would prove to be the beginning of his professional downfall.

 

A high-profile bankruptcy, unwanted publicity and shame soon followed.


Suddenly, a life lived on the edge would come crashing down around him leaving him broke, unemployed, estranged from his friends and family, his future and very survival, uncertain.


The documentary itself comprises of raw, intimate and often confronting material, including uncensored interviews with Waterstreet himself, complemented by musings by the heavy-hitters of both the legal, social and entertainment circles that enrich his story and personify this specific perspective in Australian psyche.


These interviews are accompanied by unique and captivating archival footage and observational, fly-on-the-wall style vignettes that capture the absurd and often shocking moments of a life in decline.

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DONATIONS

After five years of self-funded development, Canvas Film are seeking to crowd fund $50,000 toward completing a rough cut of the Waterstreet Documentary.

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The rough cut will allow Canvas Film to screen the documentary to distributors and for submission to film festivals. 

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All donations are 100% tax-deductible and will be used towards the completion of the film.   

 

Donations can me made through The Documentary Australia Foundation project page.

SUPPORT THIS PROJECT
 
 

ENQUIRIES

For any enquiries, please contact the production team:

 

Felicity Verdouw - Producer

felicity@canvas.film

TEL. +61 4 81 143 032

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Ricardo Skaff - Director/Writer

ricardo@canvas.film

TEL. +61 4 08 192 910

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