Bob Connolly

Bob Connolly is an Australian film director, cinematographer and author. He is best known for his documentaries produced over the past 30 years, including The Highlands Trilogy and Rats in the Ranks. More recent films include Facing the Music (2001) and Mrs Carey's Concert (2011). His films have won Academy Award nomination, AFI Awards, and Grand Prix at the Cinema du Reel Festival.

Connolly was educated at Sydney's Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview and attended Sydney University. He trained as a journalist at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), where he worked for almost a decade as a foreign correspondent, current affairs reporter and documentary filmmaker. While at the ABC he made over 30 documentaries and met his future wife Robin Anderson, then a research assistant. The couple had two daughters together.

In 1980 he left the ABC to work independently with Robin Anderson. Their first film together was River Journey (1980), Shot on 35mm film during an arduous 2 week rafting trip down Tasmania's Franklin River, the film played a major role in the river's subsequent preservation. For the next twelve years Connolly and Anderson directed their focus on the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The couple developed an acclaimed professional partnership which included the award winning Highlands trilogy of documentaries about Papua New Guinea, which saw First Contact receive an Academy Award Nomination.

In 1986 following training in 16mm cinematography and sound recording at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS), they returned to the Highlands to make Joe Leahy's Neighbours (1989) followed by Black Harvest (1992). The three PNG films are still widely distributed around the world as "The Highlands Trilogy" and have together won more than 30 national and international awards.

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