George Pank's all-round skills for film producing taken from Adelaide's Flinders University to the international sets

Adelaide's Flinders University graduate George Pank's film producing skills have had growing impact into project such as Slumdog Millionaire, Amy, Exit Through the Gift Shop and All This Mayhem.

George Pank, a graduate of Adelaide’s Flinders University graduate in law, screen studies and politics, shared an Oscar in 2016, as co producer of the documentary Amy about singer Amy Winehouse.

Pank also had a key role in making films like Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as the projects’ legal and business affairs consultant. Pank initially did a straight law degree at Flinders University and later went back to study a combined degree in film, politics and law: “I never really wanted to just be a lawyer. I wanted to make things and do something creative. So I came across this middle ground of being a producer”.

Pank credited Mike Walsh (associate professor and senior lecturer in screen and media at Flinders University) with giving him film creative knowledge.

Pank’s all-round skills flourished when working in London with writer/producer James Gay-Rees as a producing double act. Together, they covered all the bases, from identifying material, securing the rights, raising the finance, building the creative team (director/editor/writer) and then setting up the sale and distribution strategy.  

After being involved as a co producer with the successful Banksy documentary Exit through the gift shop (2010), Pank brought his skills back home and make the Australian movie All This Mayhem (2014), directed by friend Eddie Martin, about the famous Melbourne skateboarding brothers Tas and Ben Pappas.

Pank described the 2018 documentary Amy, on the life and death of singer Amy Winehouse, as “the culmination of two sides of my skill set, merging my producing brain and my legal brain into one”. Pank added: “This was an intensely difficult movie to make in terms of how some of the individuals were portrayed, from a copyright and privacy issues point of view. It was such sensitive material that it had to be done right. And, because I had specialist film law skills, as well as production skills experience from All This Mayhem, I found myself at the heart of the creative process in the edit room”.

Pank was executive producer on another documentary in 2019 about the football legend Diego Maradona.