Gerringong Pic’n’Flicks will be showing the George Gittoe and Hellen Rose film “Ukraine Guernica Art Not War '' on Friday 1 September at the Gerringong Town Hall starting at 7:30pm.

The film was launched in the Illawarra at the Gala Cinema Warrawong on 16 August. 

George Gittoe is a long-term resident of Werri Beach, and if you saw him quietly shopping at the local Gerringong IGA, you wouldn’t have any idea what a remarkable life he has led. 

He is described as one of Australia’s most uncompromising artists, activists, and filmmakers. In collaboration with Hellen Rose, new creative works arise from the ashes of unspeakable tragedy, including the former House of Culture in Irpin, Ukraine.

For 50 years, he has worked in almost every war zone since Vietnam, including Cambodia, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Somalia, South Africa, Rwanda, Mozambique, Western Sahara, Southern Lebanon, Palestine-Israel, Tibet, East Timor, Bougainville, Northern Ireland, the Republic of the Congo, Yemen, Iraq, the North-West Frontier of Pakistan, and Afghanistan. He has become an award-winning filmmaker and public artist.

He has brought a fearless and compassionate eye to all these war zones and has received many awards and honours, including the Sydney Peace Prize.

Remarkably he has made several Pashtun romance dramas in northern Pakistan, where filming sometimes led them to cross the border into Afghanistan.

In George’s own words, why does he do it? 

“The whole world is my studio. In the past it was the natural world where predators fed on gentler creatures. I go alone into a different kind of human wilderness to contemplate the basics of humanity.”

George Gittoe installed the Yellow Surf Shack in 2021 at Pacific Avenue Werri Beach in a yellow fibro house built in 1947. 

Since 2005, it has served as a base for the surf community at Werri Beach. 

George had a famous Yellow House artist refuge in Jalalabad, Afghanistan (with the permission of the Taliban). The first bohemian Yellow House was in Sydney in 1971, when George was 21, with the likes of Brett Whiteley and Martin Sharp.