Tom Zubrycki (2021)

Tom Zubrycki is an Australian documentary filmmaker. He is "widely respected as one of Australia's leading documentary filmmakers", according to Jonathan Dawson.[1] His films on social, environmental and political issues have won international prizes and have been screened around the world.[2] He has also worked as a film lecturer and published occasional articles and papers about documentary film.[3]

Early life and education

Zubrycki emigrated with his parents to Canberra, Australia in late 1955.[4] His father is Jerzy Zubrzycki (1920-2009), a university academic credited as one of the main architects of the Australian government’s policy on multiculturalism.[5]

Film career

While studying sociology, Zubrycki became inspired by the Canadian Challenge for Change scheme, which used film and video to empower local communities.[6] In 1974 the Whitlam Labor government funded 12 video access resource centres across Australia which were modeled on the Canadian scheme.[7] Zubrycki eventually became involved in the development of community video in Australia. One of his projects involved building and operating a mobile video production facility The Community Media Bus.[8]

The technical limitations of the portapak video tape analog recording system, plus his desire to reach wider audiences led Zubrycki to switch to 16mm film.[6] Zubrycki completed his first film Waterloo in 1981. The film, which focused attention on the negative social impacts of Sydney's rapid urban development, won the prize for Best Documentary in the Greater Union Awards at the 1981 Sydney Film Festival.[9]

Zubrycki's documentaries are personally intimate views about contemporary issues. He usually employs an "documentary observational mode" and his films are narrative-based and character-driven.[10]

In 1988, he was contracted by Film Australia to write and direct a documentary commissioned by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and funded by The Australian Bicentennial Authority. However, owing to an editorial difference between the filmmaker and the ACTU, the film Amongst Equals was never officially completed. Zubrycki claimed that he was forced to re-write history in accordance with the wishes of key ACTU officials who wanted to de-emphasize direct industrial action as a way of improving wages and conditions.[11]

In the early 1990s, Zubrycki's focus turned to migrant and refugee families and the stresses caused by cultural conflict, and the search for identity and home. In 1993, he completed Homelands about an El Salvador refugee family and the anatomy of a marriage under stress.[12] This was followed by Billal (1995), a documentary that followed the aftermath of a racially motivated incident involving a Lebanese teenage boy and his family.[13]

Zubrycki's next film was The Diplomat (2000), about the former exiled East Timor leader Jose Ramos-Horta and the final two years of his 25-year campaign to secure his homeland's independence.[14] Jonathan Dawson called it his most "internationally successful" film.[1]

In 2003, he returned to Australia and made Molly & Mobarak, a story about a Hazara refugee from Afghanistan who finds work in an Australian country town and falls in love with a local schoolteacher.[15]

Filmography

List of films in which Zubrycki played a role such as director, writer or producer. All films source to Screen Australia, unless otherwise cited.[16]

  • 1981 Waterloo (Director, producer)[17]
  • 1984 Kemira - Diary of a Strike (Director, Producer)
  • 1985 Friends & Enemies (Director, Producer)
  • 1990 Lord of the Bush (Director, Producer)
  • 1990 Amongst Equals (Writer, Director)[18]
  • 1991 Bran Nue Dae (Director, Producer)
  • 1993 Homelands (Director, Writer, Producer)
  • 1995 Billal (Director, Writer, Producer)
  • 1996 Exile in Sarajevo (Producer)
  • 1998 Whiteys Like Us (Producer)
  • 2000 Stolen Generations (Producer)
  • 2000 The Diplomat (Director)
  • 2001 The Secret Safari (Director, Writer)
  • 2002 Gulpilil - One Red Blood (Producer)
  • 2002 Making Venus (Producer)
  • 2003 Molly & Mobarak (Director, Producer, Dir of Photography)
  • 2005 Vietnam Symphony (Director, Writer)
  • 2006 The Prodigal Son (Producer, Executive Producer)
  • 2007 Temple of Dreams (Director, Writer, Producer)
  • 2008 Mad Morro (Producer)
  • 2009 The Intervention (Producer)
  • 2011 The Hungry Tide (Director, Producer, Dir. of Photography)
  • 2012 Light from the Shadows (Producer)
  • 2013 The Sunnyboy (Producer)
  • 2016 Dogs Of Democracy (Producer)
  • 2017 Hope Road (Director, Producer, Dir. of Photography)
  • 2017 The Panther Within (Producer)
  • 2018 Teach A Man To Fish (Producer)
  • 2020 The Weather Diaries (Producer)
  • 2021 Ablaze (Producer)
  • 2022 Senses Of Cinema (Co-director, Co-producer)
  • 2022 My Rembetika Blues (Producer)[19]
  • 2023 Memory Film - a filmmakers diary (Producer)[20]
  • 2023 Kindred (Producer)
  • 2023 The Carnival (Producer)

Awards and honours

References

  1. 1 2 Dawson, Jonathan (2013). "Australia". In Aitken, Ian (ed.). The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. Routledge. p. 56. ISBN 9781136512063.
  2. ↑ "Tom Zubrycki". Australian Screen Online. Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  3. ↑ Zubrycki, Tom. "Articles & Papers". Academia.edu. Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  4. ↑ Klatt, Gosia (12 January 2020). "100th Birthday Anniversary of Prof. Jerzy Zubrzycki, the Father of Australian Multiculturalism". Australian Institute of Polish Affairs. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  5. ↑ Williams, John; Bond, John (2013). The Promise of Diversity: The Story of Jerzy Zubrzycki, Architect of Multicultural Australia. Grosvenor Books Australia. pp. 127–129.
  6. 1 2 Zubrycki, Tom (1997). "From Video to Film and Back Again". Metro Magazine. No. 107. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  7. ↑ Hall, Sandra (7 August 1979). "Video centres face new crises". The Bulletin. Vol. 100, no. 5172. pp. 29–30. ISSN 0007-4039 – via Trove.
  8. ↑ Hoad, Brian (16 October 1976). "A bus ride out of despair". The Bulletin. Vol. 98, no. 5028. p. 20. ISSN 0007-4039 – via Trove.
  9. ↑ "1981 Film Context". Sydney Film Festival. 2019. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  10. ↑ Armstrong, Patrick (January 2005). "Tom Zubrycki: On Filmmaking, History and Other Obsessions". Metro Magazine. No. 144. pp. 96–100.
  11. ↑ Stykes, Mark (1 February 1991). "The Amongst Equals story". Filmnews. p. 5. Retrieved 1 January 2024 – via Trove.
  12. ↑ "Film captures revolutionary's haunted past". The Australian. 15 October 1993.
  13. ↑ Hope, Deborah (5 October 1995). "How ethnic conflict left a young man with brain damage". Sydney Morning Herald.
  14. ↑ Debrett, Mary (Fall 2003). "Reclaiming The Personal As Political: three documentaries on East Timor". Metro Magazine. No. 138 – via Gale Academic Onefile.
  15. ↑ Nash, Kate (2011). "Stealing Moments: Tom Zubrycki's MOLLY & MOBARAK". Metro Magazine. No. 165.
  16. ↑ "Tom Zubrycki". Screen Australia. Retrieved 15 December 2023.
  17. ↑ WATERLOO (1981) in “Australian Screen, a National Film & Sound Archive website”
  18. ↑ "Amongst Equals".
  19. ↑ "MY REMBETIKA BLUES (English version) - Ronin Films - Educational DVD Sales".
  20. ↑ "Memory Film: A Filmmaker's Diary (2023) | MUBI".
  21. ↑ "Winners & Nominees".
  22. ↑ "Winners Archive – International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences".
  23. 1 2 "Winners & Nominees".
  24. ↑ https://www.screenhub.com.au/news/company-announcements/adg-non-competitive-awards-announced-208206-1371726/d
  25. ↑ “The Stanley Hawes Address”, in Lumina Journal No 3, Australian Film, Television and Radio School. 2010
  26. ↑ "Winners 2021 – Victorian Community History Awards". prov.vic.gov.au. 27 October 2021. Retrieved 27 October 2021.
  27. ↑ "Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards: Winners Revealed". 28 February 2023.

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.