SRN and Sightlines: Filmmaking in the Academy festival 2025 – A critical-creative report

The 2025 Screenwriting Research Network (SRN) conference and Sightlines: Filmmaking in the Academy festival, hosted by the University of South Australia (now Adelaide University) on Kaurna Country, brought together delegates from screenwriting and screen production, inviting participants to connect, relate and collaborate under the theme of hyphen. As a continuation of this invitation, this conference report is designed as a series of after-perspectives that speak through and with the registers and languages of the authors’ respective creative practice and research, translating conference impressions into the expression of our work. This leads us to consider conference takeouts as an invitation to continued dialogues and conversations on screenwriting practice and research. Gushing, itching, longing, de-centring and embracing uncertainty, we inquire into the conference theme hyphen as the desire to connect is met with both the challenge and opportunity to move beyond the boundaries of the languages and registers of our own creative practice and research.