Born in Australia, received his M.A. in Communication Arts at Stanford University in 1965 and then joined the National Film Board of Canada. He spent over 25 years at the Film Board, making many prizewinning films, including Sad song of yellow Skin which won the Flaherty award in 1971 and Waiting For Fidel, his most famous documentary. In the eighties and nineties, he wrote and directed four feature films, of which Vincent and Me won a daytime Emmy, a Parent's choice gold medal, as did Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler. He returned to his native Australia in 1995 and continued making documentaries, notably, Much ado About Something (2000) which proposed that Christopher Marlowe was the real author of Shakespeare's plays. He also made in 2005, All about Olive, the story of Olive Riley going back to her native Broken hill where she was born in 1899.