William Bemister
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William Bemister is an Emmy award-winning documentary film maker and journalist.
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[edit] Rhodesia
He started his career with the Rhodesia Herald and Sunday Mail newspaper group in pre-independence Rhodesia before joining the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation and its television subsidiary, RTV in Salisbury as a news sub-editor.
[edit] New Zealand & Australia
In 1974, he moved to New Zealand and worked as a general reporter for NZ Truth, and then to Australia where he joined Rupert Murdoch's News Limited newspaper titles: Melbourne Truth, Sydney Sunday Telegraph, and the national daily, The Australian, before returning to the broadcast media with the Australian Broadcasting Commission in both Melbourne and Sydney and the Australian Ten Television Network as Special Investigative Producer in Sydney.
[edit] Television
As an independent television journalist, Bemister's first film was The Confessions of Ronald Biggs, a documentary about the fugitive British train robber Ronald Biggs, who was then living in Brazil.
Bemister's 90-minute film The Hunter and the Hunted, about Nazi war criminals, their whereabouts, and the Nazi hunters who sought their arrest and prosecution, was commissioned by the Australian Seven Network and filmed on location in South America, France, Germany, Israel and the UK. Included in the film were scenes identifying the then whereabouts of two of the most wanted Nazi criminals, Klaus Barbie and Walter Rauff, and the only interview with Rauff. Adolf Eichmann's son Horst also controversially discusses the case against his father in the film.
A 58-minute version of the film was later telecast on PBS in the United States for which Bemister won the 1981 Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism on U.S. Network Television.
Bemister's other international producer credits include Philby on Thames Television in Britain, Moscow's Man for Sveriges Television, WDR-Fernsehen in Germany, and the Discovery Channel worldwide; and the Home Box Office documentary special America Undercover: The Search for Dr Josef Mengele for which he worked as Producer-Correspondent. He was also Investigative Reporter for Fremantle Media's The Seven Million Dollar Fugitive.
His productions for Australian television networks include a two-hour feature documentary, Spy Trap, telecast by the Australian Broadcasting Commission; the one-hour documentary special Psychic Visions Of The Future, about the world's leading psychics for the Australian Ten Television Network, and Warriors Of The Deep, a docudrama about the audacious Japanese midget submarine attack into the heart of Sydney Harbor in 1942, then the base for American and Australian warships. This film was telecast by the Australian Seven Network.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- In the Matter of Josef Mengele, a 1992 report from U.S. DOJ Office of Special Investigations to the Attorney General of the United States which refers to Bemister's investigative work
- Moscow Man entry at HKUST library
- IMDB entry
- British Broadcasting Corporation biography
- British Film Institute filmography
