Damien Cassar

I’m an ADG award winning director, writer and creative of film, television and commercials/content, specialising in comedy.

In the film and television space my short film Lowering Awareness won the 2017 Australian Directors’ Guild Award for Best Direction of an Online Comedy Project and made the front page of Funny or Die. Previously I made TV pilot Town Centre, short film Finding Oprah Winfrey and comedy reality series MTV Style Me, nominated for two ASTRA awards. I also directed Splendour in the Grass music documentary The Other Stage. My first shorts The Gardener and Someone to Love were multi-award winning. I have several projects in development.

In the advertising space I have delivered work for brands such as Domain, SEEK, O’Brien, Brickworks, NRL, Telstra, Commbank, Mountain Dew, Canon, Herman Miller and CarsGuide, and a TVC for “The Pitch” on ABC1’s Gruen. I work with a variety of production companies, agencies and brands, sometimes solely as a director or creative, at other times as a hybrid director/creative/CD.

I’m also a budding academic with an interest in nostalgia, and recently completed a Master of Arts (Media & Communications) at the University of New England. My dissertation: Taking the Temperature of Now: Recent Fictional Nostalgic Television Series of the United States: This is Us, Stranger Things and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. In 2022 I commenced a Phd in Creative Practice at UNE. My research focus is nostalgic television, and my creative project a scripted television series (dreamed) set in 1980s Sydney, Talent Quest.

Things I’m interested in: nostalgia, memory, fantasy/reality, satire, popular culture, family systems, politics, education, history, psychology, the media.