Farewell To A Dear Friend

Our friend Nigel Buesst.

A friendship of so many years, 62 years since we first met.

Plenty of water under the bridge.

Nigel at home with his minder, Jedda

 photo by Ivan Gaal

I was just starting out in my life as a filmmaker, working at the State Film Centre in the library section. One day I was on counter duties, receiving films returning from borrowers and handing out films to other borrowers.

In walked Nigel with a bundle of films under his arm, returning them from a film society he was involved with at the time. I think it was the CSIRO film group and Nigel was collecting another bundle which they would run in an upcoming programme.

A short conversation of a few minutes at the counter established that we were both interested in making films and soon enough we became close friends. Nigel was about to shoot “Fun Radio” which was a real buzz for me. He asked me to shoot a few shots from his fancy sports car so I got to operate his new Bolex camera for a tracking shot or two as he was driving.

https://youtu.be/rdvLNffm5-c

I really loved what Nigel created with that little film. It came at a time in my life where I was seeing films from around the world, features and shorts, narrative and experimental. In those very early formative days I found Fun Radio to be fresh and liberating. It had so much energy, it was so free-moving in its associations of image and sound. At the time I had not seen the UBU film package which we got to see in 1966, and I had not seen many films at all which were so vibrant.

It opened a whole new pathway into film for me:

 At the same time we were working with other young filmmakers, both Nigel and I sharing with Tom Cowan, and Nigel was instrumental in the filming of Tom's prize winning short, "The Dancing Class". Here's a shot of Nigel "hiding behind his camera" with Tom looking very fresh faced and directorial.

In those days we all worked on many other projects with many other people. Melbourne was abuzz with young people trying to make films, some like Brian Davies's "Puddin' Thieves" were feature length low budget films, most were shorts about 10-15 mins.

Nigel filmed "Nimmo Street" for Tom in 1962.

In 1963 Tom filmed my first serious foray into filmmaking,

"And He Will Rise Again".

Nigel filmed half of "On The Ball" for me, then later that

year Tom filmed "Beethoven... and all that jazz".

So you can see were were all very busy in those days, especially as were were all holding down other jobs and our films were made on weekends.

Nigel and I shared many years teaching at Swinburne, many staff-room morning teas, played lots of snooker at the Red Triangle, while continuing to make our films with no funding from government grants because until 1969/70 there were very few of these to come by. Then came the Experimental Film Fund and I was one of the first lucky people to get a grant to make "A Woman Of Our Time", a film portrait of Myra Roper.

Nigel helped me greatly in the production of this film. He had recently bought an Arriflex BL 16mm camera which enabled us to film some sync sound scenes of Myra addressing students at a speech night at Mornington High School. That was my first use of sync sound in any of my own films. I was really impressed that we got that scene in the camera as it formed a major part of the film. Nigel and I were both incredibly impressed about Myra's role as a mentor for young women reaching out into a men's world where women had very few opportunities.

But Nigel was busy working with many other filmmakers as well as continuing to make his own films and then followed his contribution as a lecturer at the new film school being set up at Swinburne Tech.

Over the years many of

our friends have

visited Nigel

and Diane

in their kitchen at

Rathdowne Street.

In 2012 I started to make a film about our close friend Paul Cox who was very unwell at the time.

My friend Kriszta Doczy helped me make that film lending me her video camera and assisting with interviews. Nigel was the editor of this film. However Nigel had installed a new editing platform which he was not really familiar with and that gave us a lot of tech problems to solve so we required heaps of technical support from our friend Alix Jackson whom we met through Kriszta.

After many robust arguments during the editing stage, we finally completed this film "The Nude In The Window". I was amazed to see Nigel weeping at the end of our first viewing of the finished work. Without Nigel’s gracious assistance I don't think I would ever have completed that film. 

Nigel with his daughter Amanda at the Palais a few years ago.

                                            

Nigel assisted many other filmmakers in his life’s journey. The list is far too long, so I will not attempt to list them all as I will most probably overlook too many.

Nigel the collector and conservator.

 

Throughout his life Nigel collected many items. The first I'm going to mention here is his wonderful habit of preserving films which he gathered along the way and which he later showed to people of this generation because he had bought his own copies of those films.  

In his early days teaching at Swinburne some fine films made by F&TV students such as Greg Dee and Rob Corry.

Paper Boy was made at Swinburne in 1973 and was Rod Corry's first year film. It was co-shot by Chris Oliver and John Ruane. Rod subsequently either failed or dropped out of Swinburne in1974. 

Nigel had copies made at his own expense so Greg Dee's "George and Needles" and Rod Corry's "Paper Boy" were preserved for future generations by Nigel on his own. A few years ago they were exhibited at a screening set up by Bill Mousoulis and Chris Luscri at the Long Play Cinema. 

Nigel with John Ruane & me, we can't recall who took this photo.

Another film shown on that programme was made by Antoinette Starkiewicz... an early animation called "Puttin' On The Ritz". Antoinette had created this remarkable little film while still a student at the London Film School. She was present the night Nigel showed all these films. Because Nigel personally collected and preserved these three works I was able to post them on my YouTube site as a tribute to the three filmmakers and also to Nigel.

Nigel prompted me to do a similar thing with "Here's To You Mr Robinson" which I made with Garry Patterson between 1973-1976. Nigel paid for it to be digitised so I was forced to get active and restore it with the best audio track available, not content with the mushy sound from the optical soundtrack which was on the film print.

Some of these titles are available on my YouTube site:

        "George and Needles":

          https://youtu.be/YBpnXsZIIkc

   "Paper Boy":  

     https://youtu.be/3rsiNDmNVxA

    "Puttin' on the Ritz":

     https://youtu.be/LqrODzRriec

     "Here's to you Mr. Robinson":

     https://youtu.be/qIblAGBBRaE

Nigel's other great hobby: Trad JAZZ

For many years Nigel assisted Diana Allen, recording and making videos of a series of jazz performances at the Bentleigh Club in Melbourne.

He also collected countless jazz works from the 1900's right through till recent live performances and I have a large box filled with CDs he gave me over the years,  hundreds of CDs with say 20 tracks on each one! I don't think this side of Nigel's life was generally well known except for close friends, but I sure thank him for introducing me to so many wonderful artists and bands I had never heard of previously.

What would my life have been like without the numerous artists or bands he introduced me to?

e.g.,

Erika Lewis and Tuba Skinny, "Jailhouse Blues"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBSuEiyoUt4

or

Leon Redbone and Robert Gordon "Melancholy Baby"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onzZu-K5g7k

Well, Nigel and I tried to do these songs but I couldn't sing like Erika or Leon, and Nigel couldn't play clarinet like Robert Gordon. But who could tootle along on a clarinet like Robert Gordon? Well, Lazy Ade Monsbourgh probably could have!

Gerry Humphrys definitely could have! 

And Nigel was very fond of both Gerry's and Lazy Ade's playing... see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ade_Monsbourgh

Jazz Scrapbook (1983)

Talking with Ade,  2003 (I don't know about this one).

also:

Benny Featherstone (Prince Good Fellows) (1996)

• The Loved One - Gerry Humphrys (2000)

I accompanied Nigel on a few trips to Ballarat for the Jazz Festival and on one of those trips he created a short film of that day, Ballarat Jazz Convention 2015 which I posted for him on my YouTube page:

 

Sadly, for some reason YouTube has made the link to this posting inaccessible. I will try to get it right.

It's incredibly difficult writing this farewell to Nigel! 

It's impossible to do justice to the many contributions Nigel has made to my life since our chance meeting in 1962!

Through all those years, through thick and thin, Nigel was the most generous and  wonderful of friends.

Peter Tammer

 

David King has sent this in since Nigel's Memorial which was held on Wednesday 22.01.25

On 22nd January 2025, Andrea and I attended a Memorial for Nigel Buesst at Elwood Bathers.

Until the day arrived and some light was shed, I had no idea why a filmmaker who had lived most of his life in North Carlton would have a memorial staged for him in a beach-side suburb like Elwood.

It was only on that day that I discovered he had been, as well as a filmmaker, an avid sailor and musician.

Those were just a couple of things I discovered about a fellow filmmaker I first came to meet (if that’s the word) in the early/mid 1970’s.

I didn’t actually meet him as much as squeezed past him on the narrow and somewhat ricketty staircase which led from the Melbourne Filmmakers’ Co-op Lygon Street downstairs cinema to the offices and editing suites upstairs. Either I was going up and he was coming down or vice versa, but there was so little space on that staircase that we had turn side on and squeeze past each other.

That was the closest I came to a pioneering filmmaker I regarded in those days with a sense of awe. The only other times I saw him were at Co-op general meetings and I remember him vociferously agitating for something along with Peter Tammer and several others at one particular meeting.

I was a young, naive filmmaker trying to teach himself how to make films from watching them, from reading books, and from trial and error in the field. Nigel, along with the likes of Peter Tammer, Ivan Gaal, and Michael Lee and were actually out there ‘successfully’ doing what I was trying to do so I could only view them with admiration, respect and awe - too afraid to actually approach any of them (although I did hire equipment from Peter), lest they think me presumptuous and laugh at me.

Plenty of people did think me presumptuous and laugh at me back in those days. Not only was I young and naive thanks to a rather sheltered provincial upbringing, but I’d also had a profound hearing impairment since birth, and yet dared to imagine I might one day become ‘a filmmaker’.

Well, I DID become a filmmaker among many other things but it wasn’t until decades later that I was to meet Nigel again at various Melbourne Independent Filmmakers dinners and screening events (hosted by Bill Mousoulis), and discover that far from laughing at me, Nigel was the kind of fellow who would have encouraged and helped me.

That knowledge was cemented at his Memorial in Elwood on that bleak, windy day in January 2025. It was just too bad that I only got to realise what a wonderful, open-hearted and ready-to-help fellow he was decades after I needed that help.

For in the late 2010’s when I met him again at a MIF dinner, I had mastered my craft in the new digital era and Nigel had pretty much retired from active filmmaking. He was dedicating his time to his family and his other hobbies. Had I known he was a sailor, we might have had some interesting conversations. Being divers, Andrea and I have had more than our share of sea-going adventures, so I imagine an enthusiastic exchange of tales just might have taken place.

But that was another aspect of Nigel’s life I didn’t discover until the day of his memorial. How little we know of those we meet and think we know! I wondered if it was just me missing out on things because of my hearing impairment and always trying to catch up. But Peter assures me there would have been plenty of other people at the Memorial who only knew (or knew of) Nigel as a filmmaker.

I count among my prized possessions, a photo (which I have somewhere but have yet to find!) taken by Bill Mousoulis at Nigel’s 80 th birthday bash in which Nigel has thrown his arm over my shoulder as we both peer at the camera joined on the occasion by John Flaus and Ivan Gaal. You can see that mischievous glint in Nigel’s eye.

I'm glad Nigel’s Memorial was a joyous occasion and not a sad and sombre one. The stories told by his son Jason, his daughter Amanda, by Peter Tammer and Bill Mousoulis drew plenty of chuckles and smiles.

As I said to Andrea, little as I knew him, I doubted that Nigel would have wanted people wailing and tearing their hair over him. He always seemed like a fun-loving bloke and, from all accounts, he had a jolly good life.

A life to be celebrated, which I think the occasion did. 

Rest In Peace, Nigel.

David King