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Name R Williams
Other Name R. Maslyn Williams
Birth Year 1911
Death Year 1999
Country United Kingdom
Comments Leaving England in the 1920s, R. Maslyn Williams moved to Australia, initially studying music at the Conservatorium in Sydney in the 1930s. He joined National Studios, where his first job was as an assistant to Frank Coffey, who at the time, was editor on the Charles Chauvel film Uncivilised (1936).



After National Studios closed in 1938, Williams joined the Commonwealth Government's Cinema and Photographic Branch, which in turn, became Australia’s first Commonwealth film-making unit.



In 1940, Williams joined Damien Parer, Alan Anderson, George Silk and Frank Hurley, as part of a film unit sent overseas to document World War II. They supplied film footage to Cinesound and Movietone for newsreel production.



After the War he joined the Film Division, Department of Information as a senior producer. He is most remembered for his realist film Mike and Stefani (1952), which captures 'lives in limbo' as Williams follows a family of Displaced Persons (DP) living in a German refugee camp post-War.



Frustrated by the creative constraints of the Film Unit, Williams left the institution in 1962 to pursue a career in writing. He wrote several documentary and fiction books, winning both the FAW Christina Stead Award in 1988 and the Douglas Stewart prize in the 1989 NSW literary awards.





FILMOGRAPHY

Some of the films made by Williams at Commonwealth Film Unit:



The Music Makers (1945)

Gold Town (1949)

Mike and Stefani (1952)

Melbourne Wedding Belle (1953). Produced by Williams. Direction and lyrics by Colin Dean

Down in the Forest (1954)

This is the ABC (1955)

Music Camp (1958)

New Guinea Patrol (1958)

Way to a New World (1959)

An Agricultural Officer in Papua and New Guinea (1961)

The Cruise of the Magi (1962)



Films made after leaving the Film Unit:



Stone Age Island (1964)

Five Journeys from Jakarta (1965)

East is Red (1967)





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