Mia de Rauch’s short film Barwon Mansion, filmed on location at Inverleigh’s Barwon Park Mansion, has received a number of laurels, most recently being named a semi-finalist in the Best First Short Film category at Italy’s Venice Independent Film Festival 2023. Mia, who wrote, directed, and produced Barwon Mansion, spoke to Matt Hewson about the film and her creative journey so far.
For many years, Mia de Rauch’s focus has been her production and marketing company Flipswitch Media, based in Torquay.
A quick look at the testimonials on Flipswitch’s website – “Mia and her team have helped create content that speaks directly to the desired market and always hits the spot” – suggests her hard work is paying off.
And yet Mia’s most recent success, the short film Barwon Mansion, is a return to the aspirations she had as a young person.
As a child, Mia always wanted to be an actor, which then led into theatre directing and, later on, production.
“I ended up behind the scenes; I started at a production company in Melbourne when I was about 16,” Mia said.
“I just kept going from there and ended up doing a few feature films, producing my own feature film and doing bits and pieces with the TV and film industries.”
Mia studied professional communication at RMIT in Melbourne, focusing on TV, radio and journalism.
This soon led to content creation and the establishment of her own company, Flipswitch.
“We’re a small company based in Torquay, there are four of us at the moment but we work with a lot of local freelancers as well, depending on the project,” she said.
“We’re really about creating video production, copy and video content, Instagram, and anything that businesses need to be able to get their brand and name out there.
“We do marketing strategies for our clients to make sure they’ve got all the right content and they’re using it across their ads and websites in a good way.”
However, around the beginning of 2020, Mia felt the tug of more personal creative work, inspired by Barwon Park Mansion.
“We were there filming a corporate video for the shire council, and I’ve always loved Barwon Park Mansion,” she said.
“I’ve found the place to have such a warm and protective kind of feel to it, even though it’s a massive bluestone building. It felt beautiful.
“And I had this thought in my mind – “What kind of short film could I make here?” – when I was driving home.”
The mansion’s previous owner, pioneer and philanthropist Elizabeth Austin, also served as a creative prompt for Mia.
“Obviously Elizabeth Austin did a lot of philanthropic work for women and children in the Geelong region, along with starting the Austin hospital,” she said.
“She had that kind of caring nature about her and that drive to help other people.
“That combined with so many of the stories that I’d been hearing from the news, from people close to me, about the traumas they were going through via domestic violence and emotional violence.
“And it all kind of intertwined from there; could there be a space where you could go to take yourself out of that picture and heal in the way you needed to? And the house could potentially be that.”
Barwon Mansion follows the post-trauma recovery of Claire (Clare Hayes), who needs space to find herself again after finding the strength to leave an unsafe environment.
Barwon Mansion provides that place, giving her the time and space to repair.
“One in four women are experiencing emotional trauma in a domestic setting in Australia; it’s a stat that is not okay,” Mia said.
“I wanted to explore just one example of the amount of work the process of recovery can take after such an experience, how we can help those that have hidden scars.”
Mia said beginning a purely personal project like Barwon Mansion required engaging creative muscles that hadn’t been used in a while.
“It was super weird; I did the project because I wanted to do something different,” she said.
“Most of the stuff I’ve written and produced and directed has been focused on the corporate and small business.
“It’s been 15 years between creative projects, and you have to have thick skin to be able to put yourself forward again.
“But the idea and the script came to me, and I thought, I’ve got the script, now I want to film this, I want to see where it goes.”
Mia praised her cast for what they brought to the film, both as actors and as storytellers.
“I’d worked with Alice Howell before on a few different corporate videos, and she automatically came to mind when I was writing Patricia and working on that character,” she said.
“She actually had a lot to say in a few of the edits as we were writing it. She and I did a lot of research around the psychology of manipulation and things like that as well, so she had a lot to do with it right from the beginning.
“COVID being COVID, we did Zoom auditions, so I used an online platform to cast (lead actor) Clare (Hayes). She came across amazingly well.
“And she had her own story that she was able to build into the script as well, so it became an incredibly collaborative process.”
Barwon Mansion has done remarkably well so far, chosen as the North Bellarine Film Festival’s closing night film, winning Best Film at the Toronto Feedback Female Film Festival 2022 and receiving an honourable mention at Silk Road Film Awards Cannes 2022.
“It’s just gone so much further than I expected,” Mia said.
“And I enjoy the process a lot more than I thought I would, so I’ll definitely keep going. I didn’t expect to love directing as much as I did.”
When asked about whether she would continue writing, directing and producing original creative works, Mia simply replied “Yes”, but wouldn’t be drawn on what her next film might be.
“There are a lot of people that I’m hoping to collaborate with in the future,” she said.
“But I think it’s a secret at this stage.”
