Michael Rubbo - Early Career

Early Career

"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." —Piers Handling, director, Toronto International Film Festival

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). Initially hired by the NFB to make films for children, Rubbo would direct 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), as well as 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.

His films have been widely shown on TV; Much Ado About Something being repeated several times on PBS Frontline Program which still sells the film ten years after broadcast. His work is also in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) New York and film schools around the world. He has been visiting lecturer at New York University (NYU), UCLA, Stanford and the University of Florida with longer teaching periods at Harvard University and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). In 1973, he helped found Film Australia, an independent organization devoted to the promotion of Australian cinema.

Rubbo has also directed and written four children’s feature films including The Peanut Butter Solution (1985), Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller (1988) along with its sequel The Return of Tommy Tricker (1994), and the Daytime Emmy award winning film Vincent and Me (1990). More recently he spent some time as the Head of Documentaries at Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Television, encouraging Cinema Verite and instigating the very popular Race Around the World series.

Here is a scene from Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller: The Stamp Swap

Here are some scenes from Much Ado about Something : Was Marlowe Shakespeare?