Matthew Vesely is an Australian filmmaker, best known for his 2022 feature film Monolith. His other work includes the web series Wastelander Panda (2013) and the short films My Best Friend Is Stuck on the Ceiling (2015) and System Error (2020). He works as development manager at Closer Productions.
Vesely's career started with making a number of low-budget short films, including the comedy Better Late Than Never, the documentary Street's Press, and the 2009 drama A Load Of Buckshot. In 2009, He took part in the South Australian Film Corporation's inaugural FilmLab Development Workshop.[7] His short film The Thing About Dolphins,[8] produced under the auspices of FilmLab, screened at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2011 and was nominated for four South Australian Screen Awards. The 18-minute film was also screened at other short film festivals in Australia as well as at Raindance Film Festival in London.[6][9][3]
In 2013, he was part of the writing team for the post-apocalyptic sci-fi web seriesWastelander Panda (with Victoria Cocks and Mike Jones),[8] which was produced by Kirsty Stark[6][10][11][12] and produced by Epic Films in Adelaide. The series reached a global audience, was featured on the front page of Buzzfeed, io9, Gizmodo, and Neatorama, and invited comparisons with Mad Max, The Road and The Book of Eli.[13] After being posted online, within three days the series was viewed over 100,000 times in 150 countries. The project was then given federal funding for a six-part online series.[14]
His 2020 short film, System Error, featured David Quirk as Sid, Nick Nemeroff (as the voice of George the Robot), and Vesely as George the Human.[23] The film was selected for the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, and opened the 2021 St Kilda Film Festival in Melbourne. It premiered in the UK at the Aesthetica Film Festival on 3 November 2020.[23] It was hosted by DUST, which made it available on their YouTube channel in March 2021.[24] Vesely described System Error as "a sort of pilot for a series we're working on called Overheater, which is a dystopian romantic comedy about a love triangle between an anxious young woman, a reckless man with a deathwish, and... George".[25] The film deals with mental illness and friendship, and "being okay with being broken".[25]
As of February 2024[update] he was also working on developing another film with his Monolith team (Lucy Campbell, writer, and Bettina Hamilton, producer), and a solo project, writing a script for a "kind of Lovecraftian cult film".[38] The trio were featured in an article entitled "Behind the screens: Meet 14 next generation South Australian filmmakers" in The Advertiser in December 2024, saying that the South Australian screen industry had increased its activity to a level not seen since the 1970s.[39]
Other activities
Vesely has also performed as a stand-up comic. In 2019, he performed a show at the Adelaide Film Festival, called "Matt Vesely and George The Robot Perform a Very Normal Stand Up Comedy Routine",[40] which won good reviews.[41][42]
He wrote an essay about the technical and other aspects of working with an inanimate object in a film, based on his experiences with System Error, for the filmmaking website No Film School.[44]
2024: Recipient (along with Aaron Fa'aoso and four others) of the Talent Gateway program, a joint initiative of Screen Australia and Australians in Film, which aims to help emerging filmmakers to develop their skills and forge connections, in order to succeed further in the international market[50]
2024: One of ten filmmakers selected for the "Adelaide Film Festival goes to Cannes" initiative[26]
2024: Winner, Best Feature Film in the SA Screen Awards (Monolith)
^ ab"Where are they now?"(PDF). Scotch Reports (151). Scotch College: 30. June 2011. Retrieved 22 October 2024. In March at the Bigpond Film Festival, writer and director Matt Vesely ('04) had his first film festival screening of his short film, The Thing About Dolphins.