Tom Zubrycki (born in London, England, in 1946) is an Australian documentary filmmaker. He is "widely respected as one of Australia's leading documentary filmmakers", according to The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film.[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.[3]

Personal life and activities

Zubrycki was born in the UK. His father was Jerzy Zubrzycki, a university academic credited as one of the main architects of the Australian government’s policy on multiculturalism.[4] The family migrated to Australia in 1955, where he attended St Edmunds College, Canberra ACT Australia; Australian National University, Canberra; and later University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Filmmaking career

While studying Sociology Zubrycki became inspired by the Canadian Challenge for Change scheme, which used film and video to empower local communities. The videos were shown in town halls, community centers and people's houses in a period before domestic video players were available. In 1974 the Whitlam Labor government funded 12 video access resource centres across Australia which were modeled on the Canadian scheme.[5] Zubrycki eventually became an important player 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.[6]

The limits of the new video technology and his desire to reach wider audiences ultimately forced Zubrycki to switch to 16mm film and to feature-length documentaries. Using the networks developed while making these early videos, 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.[7]

Zubrycki's films have a style that he has developed over the course of his career. The subjects of his documentaries are on the most part drawn from issues of the day, and personalised. He usually employs an "observational mode" and his films are narrative-based and character-driven.[8] His early films were stories that focused on the victims of Australia's rapid economic and social re-structuring. They included Kemira - Diary of a Strike (1984) about an underground colliery sit-in strike near Wollongong, and Friends & Enemies' (1985) about a protracted and bitter union dispute in Queensland that saw the rise of the New Right in Australian politics.

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.[9]

In the late 1980s, Zubrycki made two documentaries in Broome, Western Australia: Lord of the Bush (1990), a bio-pic about eccentric British developer Lord Alistair McAlpine and his plans to create a new ‘civilization’ in Australia's north; and Bran Nue Dae (1991), about the first Aboriginal musical written and performed in Australia. The documentary featured the indigenous playwright Jimmy Chi.

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 Salvadorean refugee family and the anatomy of a marriage under stress.[10] This was followed by Billal (1995), a documentary that followed the dramatic aftermath of a racially motivated incident involving a Lebanese teenage boy and his family.[11]

Zubrycki was employed as a commissioning editor at SBS-TV in 1996/97, but quickly returned to directing, making The Diplomat (2000), about the former exiled East Timorese leader Jose Ramos-Horta and the final two years of his 25-year campaign to secure his homeland's independence.[12] The film won the 2000 Australian Film Institute Award for Best Documentary and Best Director. The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film called it his most 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.[13] This was followed in 2005 by Vietnam Symphony, about how during the American War (aka Vietnam War) the Vietnam National Academy of Music - teachers and students - evacuated to a village where it continued to operate for five years. In 2007, he made Temple of Dreams about an Islamic Youth Centre in Lidcombe and its battle with the local municipal council that wants to shut it down. In 2011, he completed The Hungry Tide, a personal story about the impact of climate change on the small Pacific nation of Kiribati, which opened the Margaret Mead Film Festival in New York.

In 2023 Zubrycki co-directed and co-produced with John Hughes Senses Of Cinema about the history of the filmmaker co-operatives in Sydney and Melbourne, the individuals who moved through them and the powerfully independent films they made. The film won the 2022 Film Critics Circle Award for Best Documentary.

Producing career

In the early 1990s, Zubrycki started producing the work of emerging directors. One of the first films he produced was Exile in Sarajevo (1996), a personal story about the Siege of Sarajevo during the Balkan war. The film won an International Emmy in 1998.

Zubrycki has also worked with many Australian First Nation writers and directors, producing a mix of TV documentaries and features. These includes films like Stolen Generations (2000), an historical account of the policy and practise of removal of 'part-descent' Aboriginal children from their parents. Gulpilil - One Red Blood (2002) about the celebrated Indigenous actor David Gulpilil, Intervention, a record of the first year of The Northern Territory Emergency Intervention, and Ablaze a film about Bill Onus – a heroic cultural and political figure who revived his people’s culture in the 1940’s and 50’s.

Teaching and writing career

As well as making his own films and producing and mentoring those of emerging directors, Zubrycki has lectured in documentary and written occasional papers and articles.

From 2003 to 2010 Zubrycki taught documentary at University of Technology, Sydney, and between 2011 and 2018 ran documentary masterclasses at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. In 2018 Zubrycki was commissioned by Currency House to write a Platform Paper about the current state of documentary in Australia. The resultant monograph “The Changing Landscape of Australian Documentary” was published a year later. It canvassed the history of documentary in Australia and called for government regulation of streaming platforms to compel them to invest in Australian documentaries.

Films

Awards and honours

References

  1. 1 2 Ramon Reichert (2013). "Australia". In Ian Aitken (ed.). The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. Routledge. p. 56. ISBN 9781136512063.
  2. ↑ Tom Zubrycki, Australian Screen Online
  3. ↑ Articles & papers by Tom Zubrycki https://independent.academia.edu/TomZubrycki
  4. ↑ John Williams; John Bond (2013). The Promise of Diversity: The Story of Jerzy Zubrzycki, Architect of Multicultural Australia. Grosvenor Books Australia. Archived from the original on 11 January 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2013.
  5. ↑ "Community Access Video centres face new crises (7 August 1979)", The bulletin, John Haynes and J.F. Archibald, 100 (5172): 29, 7 August 1979, ISSN 0007-4039
  6. ↑ "Community Self-help - A bus ride out of despair (16 October 1976)", The bulletin, John Haynes and J.F. Archibald, 098 (5028): 20, 16 October 1976, ISSN 0007-4039
  7. ↑ Sydney Film Festival Award Winners
  8. ↑ On filmmaking, history and other obsessions" by Patrick Armstrong, Metro Magazine, Issue 144, 2006
  9. ↑ “The Amongst Equals story” Filmnews Feb 1, 1991
  10. ↑ "Film captures revolutionary’s haunted past", The Australian, October 15, 1993.
  11. ↑ Deborah Hope, "How ethnic conflict left a young man with brain damage", Sydney Morning Herald, October 5, 1995
  12. ↑ Mary Debrett, "Reclaiming The Personal As Political", Metro Magazine, Issue 138, 2002
  13. ↑ Kate Nash, "Stealing Moments: Tom Zubrycki’s MOLLY & MOBARAK", Metro Magazine, Issue 165, 2011
  14. ↑ https://www.aacta.org/aacta-awards/winners-and-nominees/range/1980-1989/year/1984/
  15. 1 2 https://www.aacta.org/aacta-awards/winners-and-nominees/range/2000-2010/year/2000/
  16. ↑ “The Stanley Hawes Address”, in Lumina Journal No 3, Australian Film, Television and Radio School. 2010
  17. ↑ "Winners 2021 – Victorian Community History Awards". prov.vic.gov.au. 27 October 2021. Retrieved 27 October 2021.
  18. ↑ "Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards: Winners Revealed". 28 February 2023.

Selected readings

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