Sarah-Jane Woulahan is a filmmaker and artist with a decades-long practice at the intersection of moving image, technology, and political imagination. Her work is driven by a persistent interest in what cinema can do when it moves beyond the screen, into immersive environments, experimental forms, and the spaces where fiction and reality become unstable.
Over more than two decades she has consistently worked at the edge of what was technically and creatively possible in Australian screen culture. Her narrative short films, including A Terrible Beauty, Object of My Disaffection, Acts of God, and Ward of State, screened at SXSW, MIFF, Warsaw, Adelaide, and many other international festivals, with Acts of God selected for the MIFF Accelerator and Ward of State winning Best Film at the Australian Dance Awards. At a time when multi-platform storytelling was genuinely new territory, she co-created Forlorn Gaze for ABC TV - an AACTA-nominated series that wove fictional narratives into real-world events across multiple platforms, and served as Creative Director of Falls TV, leading over 60 creatives in live and recorded production. She has directed ARIA-winning and MTV-nominated music videos for Silverchair, Missy Higgins, Clare Bowditch, and The Living End.
Her current work is focused on immersive and experimental forms as tools for political and social critique. The Human Algorithm, a three-channel video installation examining data extractivism, algorithmic systems, and transhumanist ideology, premiered in Melbourne in April 2026, funded by the City of Melbourne and the Community Broadcasting Foundation. She is currently developing feature film and television projects aimed at imagining the future, beyond dystopias, towards collective alternatives to techno-bureaucratic capitalism.
Sarah-Jane teaches Immersive Video and Media Futures at RMIT Digital Media. She holds a PhD from RMIT, where her research examined the translation of cinematic language into narrative live-action virtual reality.
hello@sarahjanewoulahan.com / instagram @sabotage.distance
