Mike Rubbo Director/ Producer Feb 2006

Independent producer/director Mike Rubbo was born in Melbourne in 1938. After studying anthropology at Sydney University, (BA Hons) he went to Stanford (California) on Fulbright and Ford scholarships to study media. He was the only Australian up to that time to win both prestigious scholarships.

Graduating with a Stanford MA in the mid 60’s, he has developed a vigorous career as a filmmaker and teacher. His student film,1. The true Source of Knowledge, shot around the time Kennedy was killed, got him a place at the NFB in Montreal. That was in 1965.

For 25 years he worked at the National Film Board of Canada, directing over 40 documentaries including 2. ‘Sad Song of Yellow Skin’ (1970),3. ‘Waiting for Fidel’ (1974) and 4. ‘Solzhenitsyn’s Children’ (1979), 5. ‘Daisy; Story of a face Lift’ (1982),films regularly seen at the Sydney Film festival in the 1970s and 80s, and multiple prize winners. Sad Song won the British Flaherty award and a Canadian Ertrog.

Mike himself was very active against the Vietnam war, camping for two weeks at 20 below zero in a small tent at the steps of the Canadian parliament in Ottawa in protest against the war. Soon after this, he was South East Asia regional executive producer for the UN, producing some 20 films for the Habitat conference. This was round about 1976.

His‘Waiting for Fidel’ is considered one of the first stalka-mentries, inspiring Mike Moore to make ‘Roger and Me’. Mike in fact was a pioneer of the personal authored documentary, one of the first practitioners, if not the first in English. Waiting for Fidel is part of the collection of MOMA, The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Mike has been honored with retrospectives of his documentaries in New York at Film Forum, at the Chicago Art Institute and in San Francisco art the Pacifica Film Archive, Berkeley.

He also written and directed four fiction feature films, The Peanut Butter Solution 1986. Tommy Tricker and the Stamp traveler, 1988. Vincent and Me,The Return of Tommy Tricker. 1990. These films won many prizes including an Emmy, and two gold medals from Parents Choice as the best videos of the year.

In the early seventies, Mike came to Australia every year to teach at the Film School, AFTRS, doing eight week intensive sessions. On weekends he ran retreats and gave public lectures on Verite and overseas trends. Mike also taught at Harvard University for 2 years and has been a visiting lecturer at NYU, UCLA, and Stanford University.

In preparation for these classes, Mike did long interviews with many of the greats of Cinema Verity. Thus he taped, The Mayseles brothers. Ricky Leacock. Robert Drew, Don Pennybaker, Fred. Wiseman and Nick Bloomfield. This archive languishes currently.

Mike was also active at the time of his AFTRS teaching,(early seventies) lobbying the new Aust. Labor govt. to give Film Australia the freedom of a statutory body, based on the NFB model. Mike also instigated the first NFB, FA co- production, The man Who Cant stop, which shared double billing at the Syd. Film Festival with The cars Which Ate Paris.

In late 1995, Mike returned to Australia as Head of Documentaries at the ABC, instigating the ‘Race Around the World’ series which has led to a new generation of Doc makers.

In his last months at the ABC, he directed with his wife, Katya Korolkevich-Rubbo, The Little Box that Sings about Violin making in Aust. and Italy.

Late 1996 Mike and family moved to Avoca in part because of the charming Avoca beach theatre. Mike had never seen a theatre like it in all his time in Canada and the US. It's charm and intimacy immediately captivated him. When the theatre came under threat from development, Mike led a campaign which still goes on, involing wide community support. See community section

After leaving the ABC, he spent a year in research preparing for ‘Much Ado About Something’ his film on the Shakespeare mystery, the proposition that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare. The film was another two years in the making and selling. Mike managed to sell it to the BBC Storyville and to Frontline, the flagship PBS documentary program, and the only Aust. Doc to sell this program The film has so far returned approx $200,000 in sales.

As well at directing and shooting his own films, Mike has been trialling new low cost people-to-people distribution initiatives. He bought a data projector and traveled rural NSW and Victoria with ‘Much Ado About Something’, staging debates on the finer points of English literature wherever he could muster a few sheep and a farmer. While not very profitable as yet, this Picture Show Man initiative has great promise.

In another initiative connected with Much Ado, Mike outlaid a many thousands to self publish 1000 DVD’s of Much Ado for the national telecast on the ABC, Sunday April 18th 2003 at 8.30. These were sold in ABC shops and Shakespeare’s Globe in London

He has been extremely fortunate to form a partnership with a brilliant ex South African Editor, Henion Han, who is able to turn raw footage into poetic films in rapid time. Mike and Henion are, as well, frequently making public services films for various groups without money to pay.

It was soon after this that Mike along with others, began to make the Activist video about the Avoca beach theatre issue for community screenings, Our little Treasure. Other initiatives, too numerous to mention all began, aimed at to saving the theater, including massive petitions collected at the theater itself.

Last year, Mike, with Henion’s help, made a film, ‘My Dear Russia’, about his wife, Katya Korolkevich-Rubbo going home to Russia. She returns to solve family problems and rediscover the country she left as the Soviet Union. The film is a vivid picture of contemporary Russia and also an exercise in partner appreciation. What happens when the film maker turns a reverential camera on his spouse to discover, for the first time, someone he thought he knew so well?

In 2005 he finished his film on 106 year old Olive Riley. This is called; All About Olive, and is a touching portrait of someone who lives to the full to the very end. It is the story of Olive going back to her native Broken Hill where she was born in 1899. Mike gives Olive a co director's credit, making her the oldest director in the world.

The film was recently on ABC TV. (Feb. 13th 2006) And broke records for positive audience response. In August 2006, the film was invited to the Montreal Film festival.

In 2006, Mike also become Adjunct professor in Creative industries, at QUT. Brisbane. He has been teaching a Masters course in documentary theory and production there to a small number of students, making monthly visits to Brisbane, While in Queensland, he helped maleness, a town on the sunshine coast, make Even emus need to Dance, a low budget feature using towns folk as actors, and local stories. See community page.

In the last two months he has thrown himself into helping Olive Riley put out a blog, making her the oldest blogger in the World. She is now 107.

Mike Rubbo.