Martin Butler (born 1952) is an Australian film and television producer, director, and screenwriter. He is best known the 2015 award-winning film Tanna, and usually collaborates with filmmaker Bentley Dean and editor Tania Nehme.
He studied politics and economics at Oxford University, and afterwards worked for the manager of The Who. He migrated to Australia in 1981.[1]
Career
Butler has spent much of his career as a long-form current affairs television producer. He spent six years working on ABC Television's Four Corners, where he directed and produced several episodes, and served for 10 years as supervising or associate producer on Foreign Correspondent. Moving to SBS Television, he became supervising producer for Dateline.[1]
First Footprints is a four-part television series directed by Butler and Bentley Dean and narrated by Ernie Dingo, which premiered on 14 July 2013 on ABC Television. The series won the Walkley Documentary Award in 2013.[2][3]
In 2009, he co-directed Contact with Bentley Dean. The film tells the story of 20 Martu people who in 1964 became the last people in the Great Sandy Desert to have come into contact with Europeans.[4] The film won many awards.[5]
Other films, made in collaboration with Bentley Dean, include Tanna (director, producer, and writer) (2015), and A Sense of Self (director, producer) (2016).
