Leo Berkeley is a filmmaker and an academic. He is looking at interesting ways to combine these two roles. He teaches and researches in film, television and video production at RMIT University in Melbourne. This website is devoted to showcasing his past productions, academic writing on film and television, current projects and ideas for the future. His research interests are diverse but include the practice of screen production, low & micro-budget filmmaking, improvisation, the essay film, machinima, community media, creative arts practice as research and media futures. He is excited by new developments in filmmaking that lower the barriers to production and allow a greater number of people to make a greater range of creative works. The films he enjoys most tell new stories in new ways but still aim to be accessible to a broad audience.

Contact Leo via email: leo@leoberkeley.com

by Jake Wilson

One of the most original and neglected figures in Australian cinema, Leo Berkeley has continued working across a range of formats and genres for over three decades. Yet most reference works credit him with just a single feature – 1991’s Holidays on the River Yarra, one of two Australian features invited to that year’s Cannes Film Festival (the other was Jocelyn Moorhouse’s Proof). A precursor and counterpoint to Geoffrey Wright’s Romper Stomper (1992), Holidays is a low-key study of two unemployed Melbourne youths (Craig Adams and Luke Elliott) who become embroiled with a far-right group bent on staging a coup on an African island.

Full Interview

The 57

‘The 57′ is a short essay film about my experience of the Melbourne tram route I often use for transport in and out of the city. The film is 15 minutes long and was shot entirely on an IPhone. What appears here is a nearly-finished version but, given the nature of the production, it is relatively easy to make changes. I am interested in getting feedback from filmmaking and academic peers before I finish it. I am hoping to try out a form of peer review that may be suitable for the academic screen production discipline. Please feel free to make comments on this blog post – positive or negative, specific or general, named or anonymous are all welcome.

Posted 26/02/2013 - Read Full Entry

Recent Refereed Journal Article

Abstract: There is nothing new about improvised acting in film. It has a significant but relatively minor position in the history of screen drama. The prevalence of improvisation is arguably increasing in an era where the costs of filming are reducing, which previously was a strong disincentive to take the looser, less controlled approach of shooting unscripted dialogue and action. Through looking at the recent production of a film drama where unscripted dialogue was used, it will be argued that approaches that more explicitly engage with concepts of improvisation offer both risks and possibilities for the creative process of screen production.

Berkeley , L 2011, ‘Between Chaos and Control: improvisation in the Screen Production Process’, TEXT Special Issue No 11 ASPERA: New Screens, New Producers, New Learning.