Stanley Gilbert Hawes (19 January 1905 – 19 April 1991) was a British-born documentary film producer and director who spent most of his career in Australia, though he commenced his career in England and Canada. He was born in London, England and died in Sydney, Australia. He is best known as the Producer-in-Chief (1946–1969) of the Australian Government's filmmaking body, which was named, in 1945, the Australian National Film Board, and then, in 1956, the Commonwealth Film Unit. In 1973, after he retired, it became

Film Australia Film Australia was a company established by the Government of Australia to produce films about Australia in 1973. Its predecessors were the Cinema and Photographic Branch (1913–38), the Australian National Film Board (1939–1955, under diff ...

Career

He started work in 1922 as a committee clerk with the City of Birmingham Corporation, but started his film career in 1931, when he co-founded the Birmingham Film Society. He arrived in Australia in 1946, from the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary f ...

, to take up a position as Producer-in-Chief with the Australian National Film Board, initially as a temporary assignment but made permanent within a couple of years of his arrival. Hawes is regarded as working primarily in the classical style of documentary he learnt with John Grierson in the 1930s. As Moran writes, 'Films such as '' School in the Mailbox'', '' Flight Plan'' and ''

The Queen in Australia ''The Queen in Australia'' is a 1954 documentary about the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Australia in 1954. It was the first colour film made in Australia. It was released in the US by the Australian government information service.

'' make clear his aesthetic preference for the classic documentary rather than for drama or the more evocative, poetic forms of documentary'. He was elected a member of the board in 1952 and became a member of the British Film Academy the following year. He joined UNESCO in 1958 and chaired the National Film Theatre of Australia between 1970 and 1974. In 1971 he was appointed to chair the Film Board of Review.

Awards

In 1970 he was awarded an

MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...

and the Raymond Longford Award from the Australian Film Institute

The Stanley Hawes Award

The $5,000 Film Australia Stanley Hawes Award was established in 1997 to honour Stanley Hawes as first Producer-in-Chief of the Australian National Film Board and Commonwealth Film Unit. The award recognises the significant support he gave independent filmmakers in the documentary sector and is thus awarded to a person or organisation that makes an outstanding contribution to the documentary sector in Australia. The award is announced annually at the

Australian International Documentary Conference The Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) is an Australian conference for the promotion of documentary, factual and unscripted screen content, regarded as one of two major national conferences for filmmakers. History First esta ...

. Awardees: *1997 Graham Chase *1999

John Heyer John Whitefoord Heyer (14 September 1916 – 19 June 2001) was an Australian documentary filmmaker, who is often described as the father of Australian documentary film.''Oxford companion to Australian film'' (1999) John Heyer spent the majo ...

*2001 Pat Fiske *2003 Stewart Young *2004 Robin Hughes *2005 CAAMA (

Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association The Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) is an organisation founded in 1980 to expose Aboriginal music and culture to the rest of Australia. It started with 8KIN-FM, the first Aboriginal radio station in the country. Based in A ...

) Productions *2006 John Hughes *2007 Michael Gissing *2008 David Bradbury *2009 Bob Connolly *2010

Tom Zubrycki Tom Zubrycki (born in London, England, in 1946) is an Australian documentary filmmaker. He is "widely respected as one of Australia's leading documentary filmmakers", according to ''The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film''. Hi ...

*2011

Rachel Perkins Rachel Perkins (born 1970) is an Australian film and television director, producer, and screenwriter. She directed the films ''Radiance'' (1998), ''One Night the Moon'' (2001), ''Bran Nue Dae'' (2010), and ''Jasper Jones'' (2017). Perkins is an ...

*2012 Julia Overton *2013 Documentary Australia Foundation *2014 Chris Hilton *2015 Pauline Clague *2016 Sonya Pemberton *2017 Brian Beaton *2018 Curtis Levy *2019 James Bradley *2020

Janine Hosking Janine Hosking is an Australian documentary film maker. She won a Walkley Award in 1997 for a Seven Network television report titled ''Tjandamurra'', the story of Tjandamurra O'Shane. Hosking has made several other well received documentaries ...

*2021 Michaela Perske *2022 David Tiley

Selected filmography

Producer

*''Today We Live: A Film of Life in Britain'' (1937, Associate producer) *''Here is the Land'' (1937) *''Timber Front'' (1940) *''Heroes of the Atlantic'' (1941) *'' Women are Warriors'' (1942) *'' Crocodile Hunters'' (1949) *''Darwin-Doorway to Australia'' (1949) *''Australia's Greatest River'' (1950) *''Know Your Children'' (1950) *''The Shearers'' (1950) *''Bush Policemen'' (1952) *''Snowy Waters'' (1952) *'' Mike and Stefani'' (1952) *'' Outback Patrol'' (1952) *''Across the Frontiers'' (1953) *'' Bush Policeman'' (1953) *''

'' (1954) *''Melbourne Olympic City'' (1956) *'' Bring out a Briton'' (1958) *''Welcome Your Majesty'' (1958) *''The Queen Returns'' (1963) *''The Presidential Tour'' (1966) *''Expo 70 series'' (1970)

Director

*''The G.B.I. Geography of Scotland: Water Power'' (1937) *''Here is the Land'' (1937) *''Man into Monkey'' (1938) *''Speed the Plough'' (1939) *'' The Home Front'' (1940

*''Maple Sugar Time'' (1941) *''

The World in Action ''The World in Action'' (aka ''World in Action'') was a monthly series of propaganda films from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), created to boost morale and show the Allied war effort during the Second World War. The series was inspired ...

: The Invasion of North Africa'' (1942) *'' School in the Mailbox'' (1946) *''Building for Tomorrow'' (1947) *'' Flight Plan'' (1950) *''

'' (1954) *''Children's Theatre'' (1961)

Editor

*''Dry Dock'' (1936)

Notes

References

Moran, Albert (1987) 'Documentary Consensus: The Commonwealth Film Unit: 1954–1964' in O'Regan, T and Shoesmith, B (eds) ''History on/and/in Film'', Perth, History & Film Association of Australia
*Moran, Albert (1991) ''Projecting Australia: government film since 1945'' Sydney, Currency Press

External links

Stanley Hawes at the National Film and Sound ArchiveStanley Hawes at the National Film Board of Canada
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hawes, Stanley 1905 births 1991 deaths Australian documentary film producers British emigrants to Australia British documentary film producers British expatriates in Canada