Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When was George Noel Gittoes born?
George Noel Gittoes (born 7 December 1949) is an Australian artist, film producer, director and writer. In 1970, he was a founder of the Yellow House Artist Collective in Sydney. After the Yellow House finished, he established himself in Bundeena and since then has produced a large and varied output of drawings, paintings, films, and writings. Gittoes’ work has consistently expressed his social, political and humanitarian concern at the effects of injustice and conflict. Until the mid-1980s, this work was chiefly done in Australia. But in 1986 he travelled to Nicaragua, and since then the focus of Gittoes’ work has been largely international. He has travelled to and worked in many regions of conflict, including the Philippines, Somalia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Bougainville, and South Africa. In recent years his work has especially centred on the Middle East, with repeated visits to Israel and Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In 2011, he established a new Yellow House, a multidisciplinary arts centre in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Among many prizes, Gittoes has twice been awarded the Blake Prize for Religious Art.
Marianne Gittos (31 July 1830–24 January 1908) was a New Zealand Wesleyan mission worker, teacher and homemaker. She was born in Mangungu, Northland, New Zealand on 31 July 1830.
Gittoes has received numerous awards, including the Bassel Shehade Award for Social Justice (awarded at Syracuse University, New York, in October 2013) and, most recently the prestigious (November 2015).
Born at Onehunga on 13 November 1923, Gittos was the son of Benjamin Frank Gittos and Gladys Victoria Gittos (née Sayers), and the younger brother of Murray Gittos.
In March 2003, he visited Iraq soon before the American-led invasion which began on 19 March. On this visit he was able to observe how Iraqi civilians were preparing for the war they knew was coming. After the invasion he visited Iraq three times before May 2004, interviewing American soldiers and Iraqi civilians and soldiers, focusing especially on the role of music on the modern battlefield. Although Australian troops were serving in Iraq, Gittoes had little contact with them. Out of this came one of his most acclaimed films, Soundtrack to War, which was released in 2004 and shown on Australian TV and on MTV in the United States. Some of Gittoes’ film was also used in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. As well as film, Gittoes produced a lot of art out his time in Iraq, leading to an exhibition, No exit: a Tale of Two Cities – George Gittoes in New York and Baghdad. Two years later, in 2006, he linked up again with some of the African-American soldiers who had featured in Soundtrack to War, this time on their home turf in Miami, Florida, making a film, Rampage, about a gang-based sub-culture which some of the soldiers commented was more dangerous than Iraq. Rampage featured in a number of film festivals, and had cinema releases in Australia, Britain and the United States.
Gittoes was working at home in his studio at Bundeena, on the coast south of Sydney, when the world suddenly changed on 11 September 2001. The resulting wars and confusion in the Middle East were to provide the driving force for Gittoes’ career over the next decade and a half. By November 2001 the United States had invaded Afghanistan and overthrown the Taliban government, beginning a decade-and-a-half of war in the country. Gittoes had already visited Afghanistan as part of the Minefields project, and quickly became engaged in the effects of this new war on the country. He has maintained this engagement ever since. In early 2002 he travelled to Afghanistan for six weeks with Médecins sans Frontières, visiting refugee camps established after the invasion. He also had a commission from the Visible Art Foundation in Melbourne to paint three works marking the 11 September anniversary for the . The works, War on Terra, were rejected – for political reasons, Gittoes believed – but later exhibited at St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne. Later in the year, a trip to America, where the build-up to the war in Iraq had already begun, led to a turning point in Gittoes’ career. He had always been interested in popular culture, but now he saw a new importance in reaching the MTV and rap-music generation of younger Americans, many of whom would be fighting in the war. This helped lead him back into film-making.
In partnership with Dalton, Gittoes now turned especially to documentary film-making, first with Tracks of the Rainbow (1984), a film about Aboriginal children visiting sites of importance to the story of the Rainbow Serpent. Then there were a series of films about life, cultural confrontation, and art in the Northern Territory: Warriors and lawmen (1985), Frontier women (1985), Unbroken spirit (1985), and Visions in the making.
Returning to Australia in late 1969, a meeting with Martin Sharp led to the establishment of the Yellow House Artist Collective near Kings Cross, New South Wales. Gittoes worked with another friend, Bruce Goold, to transform a two-storey building in Macleay Street, Potts Point, into a space in which artists, film-makers and performers could both live and exhibit their work. In an Australia whose culture had been seen by many as stifled and colonial, the Yellow House was a revelation. Gittoes’ own particular contribution was a psychedelic Puppet Theatre, in which he and assistants performed to enthusiastic audiences, using glove puppets Gittoes himself made. In 1971 Gittoes, who regarded his work as fine art and was not completely in sympathy with the counter-cultural communalism of others in the Yellow House, broke away from the group. He had also been very deeply affected by the suicide of his girlfriend, Marie Briebauer. He had met Briebauer in San Francisco, and eventually she followed him to Sydney. But she was facing up to difficult issues with her family, and was not completely accepted by the Yellow House community. Her death was the first great crisis in Gittoes’ life.
Soon afterwards, in May and June 1993, Gittoes visited Australia’s other major peacekeeping operation at the time, in Cambodia. Cambodia had suffered from American bombing in the Vietnam War, the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime of 1975–1979. and long years of civil war between the Vietnam-sponsored government which had ousted the Khmer Rouge and various other factional groupings. Australian diplomatic leadership in achieving a settlement to the conflict under the auspices of the UN meant that the resulting UN operation, the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), was led by an Australian, Lieutenant General John Sanderson. Gittoes documented activities of Australian signallers with UNTAC and painted Sanderson’s portrait, but was also moved in particular by the stoic endurance of the many Cambodian victims of landmines.
In 2016, Gittoes published an anecdotal autobiography, Blood Mystic, combining reproductions of works with reminiscences spanning the whole of his life.[12] He continued to paint, and in 2017 painted two portraits of Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, and a series of “black paintings” done in Jalalabad.
From 1993, Gittoes’ career took a distinct new direction. Building on his work in Nicaragua and the Philippines, he made a long series of visits to war zones, initially those in which Australian military personnel were serving in multinational peacekeeping operations. Although since World War I Australia had a long tradition of employing official war artists, Gittoes was never a designated Official Artist. Rather, he travelled under the auspices of and generally with the assistance of the Australian army, but remained free to express himself as he wished. On these trips he produced a large body of photographs, drawings and paintings. True to the Externalist tradition, many of the drawings incorporate written texts describing the situations which had inspired them. Many of these works are held by the Australian War Memorial, which had helped facilitate the initial contact with the army. One aspect of Gittoes’ work in this period which differentiates him from most Australian official artists is an enduring interest in and concern for the ways in which the conflict which led to the arrival of the peacekeepers had affected the local people. Gittoes did document the activities of the military personnel he was accompanying, but his vision was also consistently much broader.
Gittoes had by now separated from his wife, Gabrielle Dalton, and for a time considered leaving Australia altogether. In 2009 and 2010 he rented a studio in Berlin, and had a productive period working on Descendance, a series of large-scale paintings inspired by events in the Middle East, but taking up themes and ideas from Night Vision, a long, cathartic novel which he periodically wrote up and revised. In 2010 with the aid of an international aid grant he returned to Pakistan’s tribal belt to make three more Pashto films, to help develop the Pakistan film industry. These were three dramas: Moonlight, Starless Night and The Flood. He was assisted now by his new partner, artist Hellen Rose. The State Library of NSW holds a significant collection of material related to Gittoes' work in Australia and overseas including artists diaries.[10]
In 2001 Gittoes made three trips to South Africa, to link up with a retrospective touring exhibition, Lives in the Balance. He also travelled once again to Israel and Palestine, documenting the ongoing conflict over Gaza.
The following year, 2007, Gittoes began an enduring phase of making films in Pakistan and Afghanistan by filming the third film in the War on Terror trilogy, , in the tribal belt in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. In a departure from his previous films, this one was a docudrama combining the drama and action of a Pashtun telemovie with documentary footage from the Taliban-controlled tribal belt. Like all Gittoes’ films to this date, it was co-produced by his then wife, Gabrielle Dalton. Gittoes formed a good relationship with local film-makers and actors (some of whom later worked with him in Afghanistan), and worked with them to direct and produce two films in Pashto, the Pashtun language: Servants and Fire. The art he produced in Pakistan led to an exhibition, The Time: a season in Pakistan, in Sydney in 2008. Miscreants of Taliwood was widely screened at major film festivals and on TV in 2009 and 2010. Gittoes was not done with film-making in Pakistan, but in the meantime he travelled to Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait, where he once again linked up with units of the Australian Defence Force serving in these areas.
on IMDb with George Gittoes on Art, Media and War
Gittos was born on 4 January 1920, the elder son of Benjamin Frank Gittos and Gladys Victoria Gittos (née Sayers). His younger brother was Austen Gittos. Murray Gittos was educated at Auckland Grammar School from 1933, and served as a staff sergeant in the New Zealand Temporary Service during World War II. He became engaged to Hazel Constance Faith Gittos in 1945, and they married in about 1949.
In 1989 Gittoes travelled to the Philippines, intending to make a film about women political prisoners. Funding problems prevented the film’s being made, but again he was brought face to face with victims of conflict, especially between government forces and the dissident New People’s Army. The resulting works included the Salvage series, documenting the discovery of the body of a torture victim. He also began a long friendship and collaboration with Filipino artist Nune Alvarado. As much as Nicaragua, the Philippines helped shape Gittoes’ future work: “Through my art I can be an advocate for so many people silenced by poverty and the conflicts around them.”[5]
The Counihan Gallery, managed by City of Moreland Council, is named in his honour. To mark its tenth anniversary, Edwina Bartlem curated an exhibition in which contemporary artists created works inspired by the art and ideas of Counihan. The artists included George Gittoes and Angela Cavalieri.
In 1986, the success of the Northern Territory films led Gittoes overseas, to make Bullets of the poets (1987), a film about a group of Sandinista women poets who had fought in the Nicaraguan revolution. This was a turning point for Gittoes. He was influenced by Nicaraguan poet and priest Ernesto Cardinale, whose philosophy of Externalism he later described as follows: “The Externalist poets believed in using real life events and physical experiences in their poetry, instead of the imagery of the imagination. For them reality was more incredible than fantasy.”[3] Gittoes’ key work from this period was the drawing, “The captured gun”, of a half-crippled Sandinista fighter who carried a captured American rifle adapted to use Russian ammunition, which he felt “symbolised that particular phase in the conflict ... and became a major breakthrough in my artistic career.”[4]
While maintaining a base in Sydney, in 2011 Gittoes began a long period working in Jalalabad, the second-largest city in Afghanistan. Jalalabad, in far eastern Afghanistan, has a predominantly Pashtun population, similar to the areas where Gittoes had been working across the Pakistan border. Here Gittoes set up a new Yellow House – the – to be a centre of production and education in art, film-making, music, dance and performance. Inspired like the original Yellow House of 1970–71 as an artists’ cooperative which can use culture to counteract the prevailing landscape of war and conflict, the new Yellow House has as a slogan, “Declare love on war!!!!”, and aims to provide “a safe space where artists from all mediums meet, work and create independently of the destructive forces that not only threatens their physical lives but their inner spirit.” It also provides “a ‘safe haven’ for women’s arts and philosophy groups.” The Yellow House features a cinema, traveling tent circus, rainbow painting studios, Secret Garden Cafe and Rose Theatre outdoor stages. As well as activities in the House itself, the members have organized a travelling tent circus, film shows and other activities in villages in the area.[11]
Soundtrack to War is a 90-minute documentary by Australian war artist George Gittoes. Filmed throughout 2003-2004, Gittoes bypassed the U.S. military's media lockdown on the war in Iraq to capture an authentic account of the human experience of the war. Gittoes interviewed American soldiers deployed in Iraq to create an account of the role of music in the contemporary battlefield. The film was followed by a sequel, "Rampage".
At the start of 2018 Gittoes began work on a new, even more ambitious film, White Light, a documentary filmed in south Chicago. With 500 fatal shootings a year in Chicago, and violent gangs controlling micro-territories, Gittoes found himself in as lawless and dangerous a place as any he had experienced. Gaining the trust of gang members, he was able to weave gun protests and the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King into his story.
Gittoes was born 1949 in Brighton-le-Sands, New South Wales and grew up in nearby Rockdale, New South Wales, both southern suburbs of Sydney, Australia. His family, though not rich, was comfortably middle class. Gittoes’ maternal grandfather, who lived in the area, was a semi-professional racehorse trainer, and was a significant influence in Gittoes’ childhood. Gittoes' father, Claude, was a public servant, who rose to be Secretary of the Department of Main Roads. His mother, Joyce, was an artist and potter. Both parents encouraged George and his sister, Pamela, 7 years his elder, as artists. Gittoes completed his schooling at Kingsgrove North High School, and began an Arts degree at Sydney University. However, an encounter with the visiting American art critic Clement Greenberg led to Gittoes' abandoning his studies in order to spend time in America. In New York Gittoes came under the influence of the social realist artist, Joe Delaney, whose work was influenced by his involvement in the civil rights movement. Gittoes’ art similarly veered towards the political, and in the US he began the Hotel Kennedy Suite, inspired by opposition to the Vietnam War.
Gittoes' service to Australia has been recognised by the award of Member of the Order of Australia (1997) "for service to art and international relations as an artist and photographer portraying the effects on the environment of war, international disasters and heavy industry".[15]
In this period, Gittoes was deeply affected by the death of his friend Ronaldo Cameron, a dancer who had been part of the TREE productions. Gittoes had painted Cameron in the advanced stages of motor neurone disease, and after his death expressed his grief with the painting, Ancient Prayer, which in 1992 won the prestigious Blake Prize for Religious Art. In 1993 he won the Wynne Prize for landscape, for Open Cut, from the Heavy Industry series.