Rupert Kathner

Rupert Kathner (1904–1954) was an Australian film director best known for newsreels and low-budget films. He worked with Alma Brooks, an ex-barmaid, who co-produced, operated the camera, edited, co-scripted and acted in their films. Kathner and Brooks were also "shady con artists and fugitives from the law", sometimes described as the "Bonnie and Clyde" of the Australian film industry.

Kathner was born in Adelaide and educated at St Peter's College. He studied art under Hans Heysen and became a sketch artist. He broke into the film industry in the early 1930s by working on set designs. His first movie was Phantom Gold (1937).

Kathner and Brooks achieved their first success with their "shocking [for the time] newsreels". The most popular of these was about the unsolved murder case, The Pyjama Girl Murder. The newsreel was about to be distributed internationally when World War II broke out.

Kathner and Brook's features were essentially B-grade movies, and dealt with typically Australian topics such as Ned Kelly and horse-racing.

They were often in trouble with the law.

Kathner died of a brain haemorrhage in 1954.

Hunt Angels (2006) is a feature-length documentary which re-enacts Kathner and Brooks' "movie-making spree that took on the Hollywood barons, a corrupt police Commissioner and the (so-called) cultural cringe, all in their passionate pursuit to make Australian films. On the run from police across thousands of miles, they would stop at almost nothing to get their films made."Hunt Angels "uses an innovative digital composite technique whereby the characters come alive in the real world of Sydney in the 30's and 40's".

The film was directed by Alec Morgan. It stars Ben Mendelsohn and Victoria Hill, playing the roles of Kathner and Brooks, and includes interviews with "real" people such as actor Bud Tingwell, filmmaker/distributor Andrew Pike, and Kathner's son, Paul F. Kathner.

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