Is it
important that we have an Australian film industry?
Would it
really matter if the federal and state governments stopped subsidizing the
development and production of Australian screen content and allowed the
‘industry’ to die a natural death, as is the case with other inefficient
industries?
The word
‘industry’ is problematic - conjuring up as it does a product for which there are identifiable consumers
and from which a profit is expected to accrue. Very few Australian films make a
financial return on the investment in them - the Australian tax-payer being a
major investor. To pretend that it will ever be otherwise is to delude
ourselves. It is a delusion that leads to the wrong questions being asked.
Imagine if
we referred to ‘the Australian ballet industry’, the Australian Opera
industry’, the ‘Sydney symphony orchestra industry’, ‘the poetry industry’ and
so on. As industries they are all abject failures so why do we bother to
subsidize them?
Drop
‘industry’ and think only in terms of ‘Australian film’ or ‘Australian screen
content’ and the questions become both more interesting and more pertinent.
It can, at
times, be useful to look back to where our current ‘industry’ began and the
reasons why political parties on both sides of the political divide felt that
Australian film was important.
As far
back as 1963 the Senate Select Committee Report on the Encouragement of
Australian Productions for television felt that there was:
“a
responsibility to protect an industry with a strong cultural element.”
In the
late 60’s and early 70’s the various bodies involved in providing the industry
with a philosophical base stressed that:
“The
industry (should be) pre-eminently Australian in character, not dominated by
other cultures; that government sponsorship would support ‘film and television
projects of quality’ and produce ‘distinctively Australian’ films that would
‘provide the Australian people with a national voice and a record of their way
of life.”
Are
‘distinctively Australian films’ necessary in the global digital world we now
live in; a world in which most screen content is not shot on film and in which
a 3 minute low (or no) budget You Tube clip can reach a larger audience in a
week than all Australian films, combined, can in a year?
The Report
of the Interim Board of the Australian Film Commission declared that:
“Australia,
as a nation, cannot accept, in this powerful and persuasive medium, the current
flood of other nations’ productions on our screens without it constituting a
very serious threat to our national identity. The Commission should actively
encourage the making of those films of high artistic or conceptual value which
may or may not be regarded at the time as conforming to the current criteria of
genre, style or taste, but which have cultural, artistic or social relevance.
Some may not become commercially successful ventures, but these may include
films which posterity will regard as some of the most significant films made by
and for Australians. Profit and entertainment on the one hand and artistic
standards and integrity on the other, are not mutually exclusive. In the long
term the establishment of a quality Australian output is more important for a
profitable, soundly based industry that the production exclusively as what
might be regarded as sure fire box office formula hits.
Is our
national identity threatened by You Tube, Netflix, Foxtel etc – all of which
bombard us with “flood of other nations’ productions” 24 hours a day?
Is it
relevant in an increasingly globalised world that posterity regards the screen
products of our efforts as “as some of the most significant films made by and
for Australians”?
Leaving
aside our own livelihoods as filmmakers (and passion for story-telling), what
would Australia lose if government subsidy of our unprofitable industry ceased
and the producers of Australian screen content had to sink or swim in a
competitive international marketplace as do the producers of other products?
Are any of
the original reasons for supporting Australian ‘film’ still relevant?
If not,
how do we Australian story tellers, working in the screen media, justify the
need for continued government patronage?
Is this a
topic worthy or discussion, dialogue and debate in 2015?
Australians want to see Australian stories on their screens. They just don’t want to see bad and boring Australian films, in the same way that they do not want to see bad and boring Hollywood films or bad and boring films made anywhere in the world.
ReplyDeleteI went to see ‘Partisan’ at the Dendy in Newtown the day after the film opened. Having paid my $19.50 to buy a ticket ($19.50 FFS!) I found myself the only person in the cinema. It soon became apparent why. How did this seriously bad film get to be greenlit by so many people who are supposed to know how a decent screenplay reads and what audiences will pay to see?????
ReplyDeleteYeah, I paid my $19.50 too. There were two of us in the audience for the first hour of this piece of crap. The other person had the sense to leave, leaving me alone. I did some emailing and checked out Facebook waiting for something to happen. It didn't. I only stayed to the end to look at the credits. I learned that Screen Australia was the main investor. Why? And Screen Vic had money in it also? Why? Who did they think would want to see the film?
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