AustLit

Leo Berkeley was born in Sydney and moved to Melbourne with his family at the age of three. On leaving school in 1973, he became an obsessive film viewer. He dropped out of two universities in his early twenties before making the move into film-making. His early films were ultra low-budget and often awkwardly pretentious productions made with a small group of patient and forgiving friends. Over time he made several short dramas on 16mm that gradually increased in scale and quality. This process culminated in the production of the low-budget feature Holidays on the River Yarra in 1990, which was an official selection for the Cannes Film Festival the following year.

Berkeley is self-taught as a filmmaker and, at different times, has worked professionally as a writer, director, producer, sound recordist, camera operator and editor. From the mid-eighties onwards, he has taught film, television and video production at RMIT University, initially part-time, while working in the film and television industry the rest of the time. From 1998, he has taken on a full-time position as a lecturer in the School of Applied Communication. (Source: http://www.innersense.com.au/mif/berkeley.html sighted 10/11/2011)