documentaries, his first documentary being New Pastures (1940) for the Milk Board. During these apprenticeship years, he worked with some of Australia's most experienced directors and cinematographers, including Charles Chauvel, Arthur Higgins and Frank Hurley. In 1944, he joined Ealing Studios where he worked with Harry Watt on The Overlanders. It was on this film that he started to develop his vision of making the Australian landscape an active ingredient in Australian films. He strongly supported government involvement in film production and, when the Australian National Film Board was established in 1945, he was appointed its first senior producer. During this time he produced Native Earth, Journey of a Nation, The Cane Cutters, Men and Mobs, and This Valley is Ours. As a young man learning his trade in the 1930s, John Heyer was keen to expand his knowledge of international films. He worked with another young filmmaker of the period, Damien Parer and they became good friends, actively reading contemporary avant-garde cinema journals, which analysed the work and theories of European and Russian filmmakers, and watching such Soviet films as The Battleship Potemkin. A keen supporter of films and the film industry all his life, he was actively involved in promoting and developing the Australian film society movement in the 1940s and 1950s. He was president of the Australian Council of Film Societies and the Sydney Film Society, and was involved in the establishment of the Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals. However, his involvement in the film society movement during the height of the Cold War also brought him to the notice of ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which suspected him of being a communist. Shell Film Unit Heyer left the government film unit to head the Shell Film Unit (Australia) in 1948. He was asked to produce a documentary that would capture the essence of Australia and in so doing associate Shell with Australia. The result was The Back of Beyond (1954) which quickly became a significant film in European and Australian film circles winning awards at several international festivals, including the Grand Prix Assoluto at the 1954 Venice Biennale. The British documentary filmmaker, Edgar Anstey, described the film as being "among the half-dozen best documentaries made anywhere since the war". In 1956, he was appointed Executive Producer, Films and Television, for Shell International in London. During the 1950s and 60s he produced or directed over 60