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Honour for Tassie cameraman
LEGENDARY Tasmanian news cameraman David Brill has been made a life member of the prestigious Australian Cinematographers Society.
“You get all these awards when you’re getting old,” said Mr Brill, whose latest work, the hour-long documentary Story on the Frontlines, was launched last month at the State Cinema in Hobart.
Born at Latrobe in 1944, Mr Brill was famously sent to cover Tasmania’s catastrophic 1967 bushfires as a 22-year-old when the two senior ABC cameramen were on leave and the rest, as they say, is history.
Mr Brill has since covered nearly every major international conflict from Vietnam onwards and told the Mercury his passion for quality journalism remained undimmed.
“Anybody can film a gun going off, it’s what those guns do to people (that is the story),” he said.
Mr Brill said this was why his body of work had been oriented more towards in-depth films of 20-40 minutes in length “that show the suffering of the people in a dignified way”.
He said that, moving forward, he hoped to produce a sequel to Story on the Frontlines, titled Witness to History, which considers his career from his post-Vietnam posting to the United States in 1976, up to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the early 2000s.
Tasmanian-born cinematographer David Hudspeth, who has spent much of his career in Victoria, where he currently lives, also was made a life member of the society.
ACS Tasmania president Peter Curtis said both men “have played a significant role in inspiring and supporting cinematographers here in Tasmania and beyond”.
“Although their careers have taken quite different paths, they are both proud Tasmanians and have given a lot of support and encouragement to those who have followed in their tracks,” Mr Curtis said.
“David Brill is such a passionate ambassador for our craft and reminds the community at large what an important role cinematographers have as a window on the world.
“David Hudspeth has been more of a grassroots mentor to countless emerging practitioners and a great servant to the ACS and the ABC over four decades. The legacy left by these two Tasmanian cinematography legends is significant.”