Actor, director and CQUniversity alumnus Wayne Blair is making his mark on the Australian film industry and has been awarded the Bob Maza Fellowship recently at the Message Sticks Indigenous Film Festival in Sydney.

The $10,000 fellowship is awarded annually and this year was open to furthering an established Indigenous actor or film practitioner's career opportunities and professional development internationally.

Wayne BlairWayne is a Butjala man from Queensland who completed his business degree at CQUniversity at Rockhampton Campus in 1993. He has lived for the past 11 years in Sydney, where he began his acting career. At the same time he began the journey as an award-winning writer and director.

Last year, Wayne starred in Ana Kokkino's feature film Blessed and he has performed with most major state theatre companies in Australia. Some of his career highlights include the title role of Othello for Bell Shakespeare in 2007, a role in Tot Mom directed by Steven Soderbergh at Sydney Theatre Company and, most recently, the infamous Lee in Sydney Theatre Company's True West.

Wayne made inroads as a film director in 2000 with his short film Jubulj through the inaugural Metro Screen Uncle Lester Bostock Mentorship Scheme; while his other writing and director credits include The Djarn Djarn (2004), which won the Crystal Bear Award in Kinderfilmfest at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival, and Black Talk (2002) which won the 2003 Dendy Award for Best Short at the Sydney Film Festival.

In recent years he has written and directed numerous Australian television series including last year's My Place, Dead Gorgeous (2009), Lockie Leonard (2006, 2008 & 2009), The Circuit (2008) and Double Trouble (2006).

This year, Wayne debuts as a director of feature films with his film The Sapphires, currently in production.