Michael Rubbo
| Mike Rubbo | |
|---|---|
| Born |
31 December 1938 Melbourne, Australia |
| Residence | Avoca Beach, NSW, Australia |
| Alma mater | Scotch College, Sydney University, Stanford University |
| Occupation | documentary and creative film director, artist, bike activist |
| Spouse(s) | Katerina Rubbo (?–present) |
| Children | Ellen, Nicolas |
| Awards | Daytime Emmy (1992), Flaherty award (BAFTA) (1970) |
Michael Dattilo Rubbo (born 31 December 1938) is an Australian filmmaker who has written and directed over 50 films in documentary and fiction. Rubbo studied at Scotch College, Melbourne, and read anthropology at Sydney University, before travelling on a Fulbright scholarship to study film at Stanford University, California where he got his MA in Communication Arts. Rubbo worked for 20 years as a documentary film director at the National Film Board of Canada before returning to Australia.
"Michael Rubbo did not invent the subjective, personal documentary, which has since been popularized by Michael Moore and Nick Broomfield, but he was one of its first and bravest advocates."
Rubbo worked for 20 years as a documentary film director at National Film Board of Canada, taking time off in between films to teach both in Australia at the just opened National Film School, and U.S. universities (including Harvard University). Hired by the NFB to make films for children, Rubbo directed over 40 documentaries, winning many international prizes. His best known documentaries are Sad Song of Yellow Skin (1972)) (filmed in Vietnam during the war), Waiting for Fidel (1973), Wet Earth and Warm people (a personal journey though Indonesia), Margaret Atwood: Once in August (1984), and a more recent documentary made after his NFB tenure, Much Ado About Something (2001). Much Ado About Something explores the possibility that Christopher Marlowe was the hidden hand behind William Shakespeare. "Rubbo marshals the evidence with lucidity and zest and comes to his own original and contentious conclusion” - Suzy Baldwin, Sydney Morning Herald
Working at the NFB, Rubbo was an early pioneer in the field of metafilm, creating subjective, highly personal films that were more like personal journals than objective records of reality. Sad Song of Yellow Skin, Rubbo's reaction to the Vietnam war, is his most awarded film in this genre. That Rubbo should have pursued this vision at the National Film Board was particularly striking, as the NFB's English-language production branch had, during Rubbo's tenure, generally encouraged a much more objective approach to non-fiction film, including the use of voice-of-God narration.
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