ABC people : the making of early documentary filmmakers

This article is the first to examine the working lives of four former Australian Broadcasting Commission documentary filmmakers and to explore their perspectives on working within the institution. It brings to light the creative pathways, and innovative contributions, to the evolution of ABC television documentary filmmaking made by Tom Manefield, Bill Steller, Storry Walton and Max Donnellan, all of whom started their significant filmmaking careers in those formative years of ABC television between 1956 and 1960. Although Albert Moran (1989) argues that the "institutional voice" of the ABC overshadowed the voices of creative individuals within organisations such as Film Australia and the ABC, this chapter uncovers a complex symbiotic relationship among these filmmakers and the ABC, and reveals individual contributions worthy of substantial recognition, revelation, and discussion.