June 1940: Jewish refugees from Austria, Germany and Italy flee Hitler at the outbreak of the war and are given asylum in England, to be interned as suspected spies, shipped off on the HMT Dunera to Australia to endure months behind barbed wire deep in the outback.
He read English Language and Literature at Newcastle University from 1981 to 1984, then worked as a picture editor at the BBC before attending the National Film and Television School from 1989 to 1992.
He was chosen by Richard Attenborough to receive the Student Award attached to his own 1992 Shakespeare Prize (Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S.).
[11] From 2005 till 2018 he joined Doug Block and Ben Kempas in hosting The D-Word, an online community for documentary filmmakers.
[12] John Burgan is the author of entries on Robert Vas, Jean-Pierre Gorin and The Back of Beyond in the Encyclopaedia of the Documentary Film edited by Ian Aitken.
[14] John Burgan taught the documentary course at the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark for two years from 2006 before returning to the United Kingdom to take up a teaching and research post at Aberystwyth University in 2008.