AustLit

Writer, director, producer.

A specialist documentary filmmaker Tom Zubrycki established his reputation in 1987 with the release of Friends and Enemies (1987). The film details the events which occurred in 1985 when more than a thousand South East Queensland Electrical Board (SEQEB) employees went on strike in protest at the introduction of contract worker hire. He later turned his attention to making a documentary about the Australian Aboriginal musical, Bran Nue Dae (1991) providing insight into its author, Jimmy Chi, and both its pre-production period and eventual staging. Since then Zubrycki has looked at such subjects the stolen generation (Stolen Generation, 2000) and Following the Rabbit-Proof Fence, 2002, the Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil (One Red Blood, 2002), and the Hanoi National Conservatory of Music (Vietnam Symphony, 2005) which examines how its students and teachers managed to continue studying while the Vietnam war raged on about them.

As a producer Zubrycki has also overseen the production on such documentaries as: Exile in Sarajevo (1997), Whiteys Like Us (1999), Making Venus (2002), The Prodigal Son (2006), A Fighting Chance (2007) and The Love Market (2009). During the course of his career Zubrycki and his films have been nominated for more than eleven awards both in Australia and overseas. These include a 1997 San Francisco International Film Certificate of Merit for Billal, and several awards for The Diplomat - notably an Australian Film Institute (AFI) Award for Best Direction in a Documentary; Most Popular Documentary (2000 Melbourne International Film Festival); and the Rudolf Vrba Award at the Prague One World Film Festival (2001). Zubrycki also won a 2006 Inside Film (IF) Award for Best Documentary with The Prodigal Son.