Nigel Buesst

Directing

Nigel Buesst

Born 1938-04-30 · Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Nigel Buesst (born 30 April 1938) is an Australian filmmaker. After graduating Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1960 from Melbourne University he headed overseas to London and worked as an assistant editor at Shepperton Studios. On returning to Melbourne in 1962 he worked for some months at the ABC's Ripponlea newsroom, and freelanced as a cameraman on various productions. He also started directing his own films, beginning with "Fun Radio" in 1963. He was also a co-founder and the artistic director of the St Kilda Film Festival from 1986 to 1990.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Compo poster
9.0

Compo is a comedy set in a government unemployment-compensation office.

Compo

1988

Bonjour Balwyn poster
5.6

Kevin leaves a job in insurance to start his own magazine. As his debts mount, Kevin’s prospects begin to look brighter in the criminal world.

Bonjour Balwyn

1971

No artwork available
NR

In December 1965 there was a jazz convention in Sydney. This attempt to record the event has lain unseen ever since, but the passing of the decades reveals the significance of change.

The Twentieth

1966

No artwork available
7.0

A student of criminology is completing a thesis on Melbourne mass murderers. With the aid of a German professor he visits the scenes of the crimes of Frederick Deeming, Norman List, Arnold Sodeman and Edward Leonski and reconstructs them.

Dead Easy

1970

Darwin Harbour poster
NR

A film about Darwin, exploring the events that led to the establishment of Australia’s main northern city. Images from the past and present reveal the early struggles to establish a permanent settlement. Culminating in the untold story of the epic voyage of the Forlorn Hope.

Darwin Harbour

2010

Come Out Fighting poster
9.0

Aboriginal boxer Al Dawson is torn by the demands of fight promoters and aboriginal protestors. He eventually decides to reject them all and gives away his chance at a world title.

Come Out Fighting

1973

Fun Radio poster
NR

This 1963 kaleidoscope of our culture, both its energy and its tawdriness, rolls out in a never ending babble from radio station 3UZ, and in particular their top DJ at the time - Don Lunn.

Fun Radio

1964

Benny Featherstone: Prince of Good Fellows poster
NR

The life and times of a legendary Melbourne musician who lived life with the brakes off. Arguably the first notable Australian jazz improvisor, he mastered many instruments - trumpet, trombone, clarinet and piano. But most of all he was and excellent drummer. Throughout the thirties Benny played hot jazz in a multitude of bands, inspired perhaps by hearing the " hot Harlem rhythms" of the Ellington and Armstrong bands in London during a 1933 visit.

Benny Featherstone: Prince of Good Fellows

1996

Jazz Scrapbook poster
NR

The only doco to record the early years of Australian jazz. This lovingly compiled celluloid history of the Melbourne jazz scene is a fascinating study of an era and a social milieu, as well as a music documentary. Revisit Melbourne's early years with Benny Featherstone, the Early Conventions, jive with Frank Johnson's fabulous Dixielanders at Collingwood Town Hall, a riverboat trip up the Yarra, Dave Dallwitz, Graeme Bell in Czechoslovakia in 1947.

Jazz Scrapbook

1983

Jacka V.C. poster
4.5

Documentary about the First World War hero and later St. Kilda Mayor. Today Albert Jacka is almost forgotten, yet his heroic feats captured the imagination of a generation. In the early decades of the century he personified the archetypal Australian.

Jacka V.C.

1978

Carlton + Godard = Cinema poster
8.0

A study of the short films made in Carlton during the Sixties, when film makers like Graeme Cutts, Peter Fisher, Geoff Gardner, Antony I. Ginnane contributed to a kind of Australian New Wave to match the revolution in theatre at La Mama. The influence of Jean Luc Godard is very evident.

Carlton + Godard = Cinema

2003

The Rise and Fall of Squizzy Taylor poster
NR

About the life of the notorious 1920s Melbourne Australian gangster Squizzy Taylor including interviews and re-enactments.

The Rise and Fall of Squizzy Taylor

1969

Gerry Humphrys: The Loved One poster
9.0

When singer and clarinetist Gerry Humphrys moved from Britain to Australia in 1957, he quickly became one of the most popular and influential musicians in his adopted homeland. Humphrys' jazz combo, the Red Onion Jazz Band, was widely regarded as Australia's finest trad jazz outfit, and when rock & roll became the dominant sound in pop music in the early 1960s, Humphrys embraced the new style as lead vocalist with the upbeat R&B ensemble the Loved Ones, which won him legions of new fans.

Gerry Humphrys: The Loved One

2000

The Destruction of St. Patrick's College 1971 poster
NR

As the wreckers ball lays waste to a fine set of old building in East Melbourne a visiting professor considers the value of our national identity.

The Destruction of St. Patrick's College 1971

1971

No artwork available
NR

A girl recalls three generations of the family history, how mother was conceived in the year of the Yarra floods and how life in the 1920's was no less a soap opera that it is today. Unique footage of early Melbourne.

Black Sheep Gathers No Moss

1997