BY PAUL BYRNES on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Sydney Film Festival.

Tom Zubrycki attended his first Sydney Film Festival around 1970. He remembers loving Ken Loach’s films Cathy Come Home and Family Life. Most of his documentaries since 1981 have screened at the festival. Former SFF Festival Director Paul Byrnes sat down with him to talk about the relationship between the Festival and documentary films, especially his own.

Published in LUMINA - Australian Journal of Screen Arts and Business

Privileged access is becoming an overused term in documentary. It’s a buzzword that’s often used to hype up a promotional synopsis, trailer or a funding submission. It feels like all meaning has been robbed from a term that is intrinsic to the very essence of the documentary process.

Made on receiving the Stanley Hawes Award for “Contribution to documentary” at the Australian International Documentary Conference, Adelaide 2010

I want to say how deeply honored I am in accepting this award. It’s absolutely fantastic to be acknowledged by one’s peers, and it’s humbling to be in such esteemed company – Pat Fiske, Bob Connolly, John Hughes, to name just a few.

Presented at “Persistence of Vision”. The Australian Screen Director’s Conference 2002

 After making documentaries for 25 years certain things change, one grows hopefully wiser and more intuitive, technically more adept and financially more secure. However the longer I remain a filmmaker the greater feel the sense of moral compunction to mentor talented emerging filmmakers. 

I’m humbled and delighted to get this award, and I wish to thank the ADG Board, Ruth and the many people who over the years have been associates, collaborators and good friends - people like Pat Fiske, John Hughes, Mitzi Goldman, Curtis Levy, Bob Connolly, Gil Scrine and the late Tom Haydon – to name just a few…

There has always been a tradition of screening new documentaries at the National Parliament in Canberra. So it came as a surprise when Joint House leader Bob Wedgwood, acting on the advice of the Speaker Neil Andrew, refused a screening of my new film Molly and Mobarak.

Tom Zubrycki argues that ,while reconstruction is not exactly de rigueur, it is still a very valid form of documentary

The British writer and academic Stella Bruzzi says that "documentaries are a negotiation between filmmaker and reality and, at heart, a performance." The notion of performance is not something I would have associated with documentary before The Secret Safari, but thinking about it, it makes perfect sense. Documentary, for me, has always involved something of a tension between spontaneity and a high level of construction.

In his book Age of Extremes: the Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 Eric Hobsbawm refers to the difficulty of writing history on the twentieth century because it is not 'a period known only from outside'. 'If the historian can make sense of this century', he says, 'it is in large part because of watching and listening.'

What I love about documentary is that it conveys the textures of everyday life like no other form can. It captures spontaneity and immediacy. It involves a process of discovery with often very unexpected twists and turns. There is never the opportunity to do a second take. I find this thrilling on the one hand, but exhausting on the other.