By Karl Quinn
Nigel Buesst – film festival programmer, film school educator and, as an independent filmmaker, a key figure in the so-called “Carlton Ripple” of the 1960s and ’70s (a play on the French New Wave, to which it was so indebted) – has died, aged 86.
Announcing his death in a post on Facebook, filmmaker Bill Mousoulis said “a giant of the Melbourne independent film community for the past 60 years has sadly passed away”.
Nigel Buesst has been credited with contributing to the current healthy state of Australian filmmaking.Credit: Facebook
Film writer and programmer Geoffrey Gardner described Buesst as a “legendary figure” from a time “when you spent your own money to make a movie”. Who was also “a highly regarded educator”.
Alan Finney, who was for decades one of the most powerful players in Australian film marketing and distribution, recalls Buesst “encouraged commitment to local production and always encouraged all of us to ‘take a risk’ and get our stories up on local screens, which is what he did, even though that was difficult in those days. We would not have a healthy film production industry and culture had it not been for Nigel Buesst.”
Buesst graduated from Melbourne University in 1960 with a commerce degree then moved to England, where he found work as an assistant editor, and worked in the news department at the ABC in Ripponlea on his return.
He directed 18 movies, from the short Fun Radio in 1963 to his last, a history of the early days of Darwin, in 2010. He also made a documentary portrait of Gerry Humphrys, the jazz clarinettist and singer who arrived from England in 1957 and went on to front the influential rock band The Loved Ones the following decade. But it was on the back of his 1968 film, The Rise and Fall of Squizzy Taylor – a figure he described as “Melbourne’s Napoleon of crime” – that he landed a job at Swinburne University’s film school.
Buesst (right) with fellow tyro filmmakers Paul Cox (left) and Peter Elliott, in Melbourne circa 1968.
Director John Duigan (The Year My Voice Broke) got his break as the leading man in two of Buesst’s narrative features, Bonjour Balwyn (1971) and Come Out Fighting (1972), and Buesst meticulously catalogued the scene of which he had been an integral part in the near-two-and-a-half-hour compilation documentary, Carlton + Godard = Cinema, in 2003. Sadly, because he didn’t much bother with technicalities like copyright clearance, that film has rarely been screened.
He was for five years in the 1980s the director of the St Kilda Film Festival, and for a dozen years he taught film to a generation of up-and-comers, including Richard Lowenstein (Dogs in Space) and Geoffrey Wright (Romper Stomper) at Swinburne.
“He had his own style going on as a teacher: meandering, very cynical, with a lot of deadpan humour,” recalls Wright. “He emphasised the importance of action in movies, he held up Dirty Harry and Mad Max as the perfect examples of what audiences wanted from an anti-hero, characters with simple, clear motivations expressed through kinetic action on the screen.”
But the French New Wave-influenced films he made were altogether different.
“He made slower, talkier, more idiosyncratic films,” says Wright, who recalled Buesst moving about the film school “with a cup of tea in his hand, shuffling from room to room, speaking slowly and in a hilariously long-winded way”.
“Nigel was never one to get to the point quickly in a conversation. I can still hear him answer simple questions like, ‘Is the Arri [camera] still busted?’ with a wistful, ‘Wasn’t it Truffaut who once said ...’ as he began a 10-minute monologue.”
Speaking with The Age’s Jake Wilson in 2003, Buesst admitted to a fondness for “idiosyncracy” in storytelling.
“Like jazz, another of my passions, there was unity in discord,” he said, in reference to some of the movies covered in Carlton + Godard = Cinema. “Emerging from their apparently aimless meanderings came an essential truthfulness, a revelation of how things are.”
His interest in, and love of, film never dimmed.
Film historian Ross Campbell remembered how the “much-loved” filmmaker and lecturer earlier this year hosted screenings “on his still-operating 16mm Steenbeck editing machine” for a couple of his old filmmaking colleagues.
That was typical of the man, Campbell noted. “His generosity towards fledgling filmmakers at Swinburne Film and Television School, and beyond, remains legendary.”
Mousoulis agreed. “He meant a lot to me personally,” he said. “He was always ready to help me with my films, with advice, or with his editing suites, or even crewing for me.”
Richard Lowenstein recalls Buesst as “a great inspiration and encouragement to me. I remember him egging us on by telling us that we were all going to become butcher’s wives and live in Nunawading unless we tried to do something extraordinary.
“He inspired us all to use what little resources, film stock and equipment we had back then, and was always ready to offer his own editing machines and cameras for use if we needed. He had a profound impact on an entire generation of Melbourne filmmakers, and I will be forever in his debt for helping me to avoid becoming a butcher’s wife and living in Nunawading (with apologies to all Nunawading residents, butchers and their partners).”
Remembering their father as “an amazing man who brought so much love, wisdom and laughter into our lives”, daughter Amanda Falvo and son Jason Buesst said they were planning a memorial for family, friends and colleagues to celebrate his life in the coming weeks.