Australian Movies - Once were blockbusters...now straight to video

Once were blockbusters.... now straight to video

" Founded by rejects from British society, Australia has a holiday devoted to a military fiasco, a hero hanged after bungling a bank robbery, an alternative anthem about a thief who commits suicide, and a film industry that keeps making self-critical movies that nobody goes to see" Who we are

Australia has consistently produced the great writers, great actors, and great directors necessary to make great movies. Unfortunately, it has not always had the teamwork spirit necessary to unite the talents in a way that always appeals to an Australian or international audience. Consequently, Australia's once mighty industry is now a production line of government-funded movies that go straight to video.

The Australian talent for movie making was first put on show in 1906 with the production of The Story of the Kelly Gang, the world's first feature-length film. The film was extraordinary popular; running for five weeks to full houses. It only cost 1,000 pounds to make but returned 26,000 pounds. Over the next five years Australia produced more successful films such as the Eureka Stockade, The Assigned Servant, The Squatters Daughter, Attack on the Gold Escort, Sentenced for Life and The Mark of the Lash. In these early years, Australia was clearly the world leader in the production of feature films.

Although the rebel stories were popular with large numbers of the general public, they offended wowsers. Consequently, in 1912 the entire genre of bushranging films was banned. With its own government saying the Australian story had no value, the Australian industry was overrun by Hollywood. Rather than grow up watching bushrangers fight corrupt troopers, Australian kids grew up watching cowboys shoot Indians and American outlaws duel with corrupt sheriffs.

In the 70s, Australia produced some great art house movies that allowed the local industry to take the first steps towards recovery. One of these was Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock - a mystery about three school girls that went missing in the Australian bush. A true work of art, Picnic at Hanging Rock never told the audience what to think nor did it convey any sense of moral empowerment. Instead, the audience was left to speculate and form their own answers. It initially baffled people because the mystery was never resolved and the audience was hanging in uncertainty.

After proving his artistic credentials with Picnic at Hanging rock, Peter Weir inspired good will towards the Australian film industry with Gallipoli. As well as being an anti-war movie, Gallipoli was a patriotic movie that captured the sadness of the ANZAC spirit. It was this ability to appeal to the diverse political groups in Australia that led to Gallipoli's almost universal acceptance.

With the public providing support, in the 1980s the groundwork was set for Australia's first international blockbusters. These came in the form of Mad Max 1,2,3 and Crocodile Dundee 1, 2. Both series of blockbusters were set in the Australian outback. Mad Max was basically a spaghetti western except it was set in the future and the marauding savages were not an indigenous population, they were motor heads seeking fuel. As for Crocodile Dundee, it contrasted cultural extremes in order to find the absurdity of modern life.

In 1988, Paul Keating, then treasuer of the Labor government, developed a cultural agenda and saw funding as a way of realising his political objectives. Keating scrapped the unbiased system of tax concessions that had proved successful and announced it would be replaced with funding for film distributors, sales agents, and broadcasters. The funding system allowed Keating's party to have more control over the type of movies being made, distributed, promoted and shown. It also marked the end of an independent film industry.

Keating saw the policy as a way of building the party's credentials amongst interest groups as well as a way of shaping political ideologies in its favour. With time, the Australian film industry regressed to such an extreme that it became dominated by cynics with mono-cultural values defined in opposition to the wider community. It was a culture that could only lead to self-destruction.

In 1992, the neo-Nazi Romper Stomper promoted the idea that pride in Australia amounted to pride in white supremacy. According to Paul Byrnes, a film critic for the left-wing Sydney Morning Herald:

"In another sense, it's a continuation of the Australian bush-ranging film traditions of the Story of the Kelly Gang, made in 1906, but without the bush, or the sentimentalism. In a way, Hando and his mates are the modern descendants of the Australian outlaw ethos – protecting their land, just like the Kelly's."

It was a self-defeatist message to promote. By extention, pride in the Australian movie industry amounted to pride in white supremacy and naturally it should be rejected on such grounds.

In 1994, the transvestite road flick Priscilla promoted the idea that the Australian outback was home to lewd, racist and uncultured homophobes that were nothing like the good natured larrikins portrayed in Crocodile Dundee. According to Byrnes,

"The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert went further than any of these in attacking the Crocodile Dundee mythology of the essentially harmless heterosexual outback male. These same types of men, usually depicted in bars in Priscilla, can be suspicious, violent, vulgar and extremely intolerant, especially when confronted with alternative definitions of masculinity."

Irrespective of whether it was true or not, it was a divisive perspective that inspired very little community spirit. Furthermore, the movie contained homosexuals making jokes about "punching donuts," and scooping poo out of toilet bowls. Consequently, if the outback was vulgar, certainly gay movie directors weren't any better. Likewise, the movie showed an Asian woman popping ping pong balls out of her vagina in a public sex show. Consequently, if the outback was racist, then gay directors certainly didn't have a gospel to enlighten them. If anything, it seemed as though the director was trying to make outback males carry the stigma of his own suspicious, vulgar, sexist and racist vices.

In 2002, the industry publicly nailed its political colours to the mast when it released and promoted Rabbit-proof Fence - a political movie that lacked all the nuances seen in quality art house movies like Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli. Rabbit-proof Fence took a politically controversial topic and made it very clear about what was the director thought was right, what was wrong, and how audiences were expected to react. Ironically, despite the fact it was sold as a defence of Aboriginal culture, the movie contained almost no examples of Aboriginal culture. If the music was foreign, with director Phillip Noyce preferring the music of Englishman Peter Gabriel to the music of the people he claimed he was fighting for

Despite the fact that it lacked any kind of artistic ambiguity, Rabbit-proof Fence won the Australian Film Institute award for best picture. When Phillip Noyce accepted his award, he criticised the Australian prime minister and said the Australian people had " lost their humanity." Not surprisingly, the Australian people had no desire to support a film industry that was hostile to them.

After the Australian industry collapsed, directors, writers, actors and producers blamed others for their failure. Director George Miller simply came out and said,

"We really don't have significant stories to tell, perhaps apart from the indigenous story...Australia at its heart is so racist that I don't think we can stomach it."

Such comments further eroded the community spirit that the Australian film industry needed to attract Australians to cinemas. Just as the Australian government had killed the Australian film industry by banning the most interesting stories, it again killed it through a funding process that created a self-destructive culture.

Ironically, Keating's cultural agenda wasn't enough to save him. He lost power in 1996 and his party spent the next 11 years out of power. Although the party had the support of Australia's cultural institutions that it had bought with public funds, the cultural institutions didn't have the support of the wider Australian community.

Unfortunately, the damage inflicted by Keating still prevails today. Australian filmmakers still have an identity built around “confronting” their audience. This usually involves setting their film in outback Australia and using the negative character traits of outback residents to define Australians as a whole. It is an ideology that appeals an urban set wanting to feel a sense of cultural superiority, but sadly for Australian filmmakers, this subculture is insufficient to sustain an industry. Furthermore, an urban set finding fault with outback residents really isn’t “confronting”, it is bigotry.

"The usual answer to this question has been along the lines that our film-makers and script-writers are tunnel-visioned in that they are only interested in black armband stuff that denounces our (always meaning "your") almost innate racism or our acquiescence in an "incontrovertible" genocide, yet another sad dirge about drug addiction or another dissing everything "mainstream" Australians respect - hence the dreary queue of pictures that 80% of us have little connexion with. In other words, producers, directors, et al., need to get out more, to see how people who don't dress all in black and can't carry on a 20-minute discussion about coffee genres, or who reckon that their outer suburban lives are fulfilling and that the fortunes of their local football team are interesting, live their lives. Interesting to know how accurate that assessment is these days. " (Leonard Colquhoun - message board poster)

"Unfortunately the damage done by the self important, government funded w=nkers who took control of Australia's film industry back at the beginning of the latest culture cringe will take time to fix. I hope and pray that we have ended the period of economic rationalism and are heading into a new and exciting time when all things truly Australian are things to be proud of. Our rejection of American Tv is just the beginning, now if we can just find out once again who we are.... " Unknown

"...holding breath for the newly empowered lefties to start blaming Howard for not funding the arts...., it's simple, if you want people to watch your films, make films people want to watch and stop telling them they are idiots\selfish for not watching a load of miserable, self-indulgent, amateur-hour tripe." Unknown

"I go to the movies to be entertained and have a laugh. Where have all the entertaining movies gone??? Croc Dundee, The Castle, Kenny, The Dish. What have all these movies got in common?? They were entertaining and made us laugh.
I was at the AFI Awards this year and there was not one film that I would go and see. There was not one film that was writen for us to sit back, enjoy and laugh.
Every movie made in this country now has to have a moral, is this part of the funding crieteria???
Just my 2 cents" Unknown

"As good as these movies are/may have been, as one earlier poster pointed out, its escapism that brings in the audiences. Thanks to our high-minded government film financing bodies, the only projects that usually get funded are serious/intimate dramas or arthouse fare. If it is comedy it has to be "uniquely Australian", read: mocking bogans or bushies." Unknown

"We have to get beyond self-flagellation because nobody wants to see that on a Saturday night...I'm not saying you can't deal with difficult subjects but there needs to be a redemptive or slightly positive turn to it." John Collee - screenwriter

"Antony Ginnane, the new president of the Screen Producers Association of Australia, however, is only partly right when he says our films are "in the main, dark, depressing, bleak pieces". He could have said "dark, depressing, bleak pieces ... too often obsessed with drug addiction, deadbeats, failure, toilet humour, gay relationships and hokey spirituality." Mr Ginnane's general view that "the feature film side of our industry has for some years now almost completely failed to connect with and find an audience" hit the nail on the head. As he told the association's conference on the Gold Coast: "Nobody goes to see them. If they premiered most of the Australian movies of the past 24 months on a plane, people would be walking out in the first 20 minutes." Editorial in the Australian

Walkabout contrasted urban civilization with life in the natural world. The characters were represented as one aspect of the beauty and horror at play in the Australian outback. More...

Picnic at Hanging Rock contrasted ordered English society with the un-ordered Australian bush. It portrayed three school girls that went missing in mysterious circumstances. In a very unique way, director Peter Weir never resolved the mystery and so left the audience hanging in a state of bemusement. More...

An anti-war movie, Peter Weir showed how war builds positive human qualities and also destroys them. More...

Based upon Australia's most famous poem, The Man from Snowy River takes the universal story of the underdog and infuses into it the positive emotions of romance. More...

With no history of Stockmen fighting Aborigines to draw from, George Miller had to conceive a failed future in order to portray the classic spaghetti western tale of the man with no name defending the good folk from the marauding tribes. More...

Two cultural extremes meet each other. One is the Australian outback and the other is New York City. Inaccurate stereotypes and cultural absurdities combine with romance to make a light-hearted comedy enjoyed by most. More...

A romance comedy about two dancers who want to invent new steps in the face of strict competition rules that no new steps be allowed. More...

As an antidote to Crocodile Dundee, Stepan Elliot wanted to clarify to the world that rather than Australia being a nation of crocodile wrestlers, Australia is a nation of homosexual men that dress up in women's clothes. Furthermore, rather than show Aborigines as people to be respected, as was the case in Crocodile Dundee, Stephan Elliot showed them as outcasts on a similar social level to homosexuals. More...

A thought provoking romance comedy drowned in an increasingly negative industry, Two Hands integrates a ying yang theme with chaos theory. In every good person there is a little bit of bad, and every bad person there is a little bit of good. The actions of each of these people have a reaction in others and the small actions of one person can lead to dire consequences in others. More…

Describing his political beliefs as to "the right of Genghis Khan" confessed murderer Chopper Reid has become an Australian icon. In 2000, his story was told in a movie bearing his name. Chopper's appeal can be traced to market demand for a figure from the right to counter the extreme left. More..

Lacking the nuances of an art house director, Phillip Noyce (known for his right-wing action movies) created a story based around a rabbit-proof fence that divided Australians into black and white camps. Basically, Rabbit-proof Fence was a movie that provided close-minded Australians with an easy way to convince themselves that they were open-minded. By taking an indignant stand against a government policy long since ended, Noyce convinced whites that they were showing open-mindedness to morally confronting aspects of Aboriginal cultures. More...

Set in a Paris brothel, inspired by Italian Operas, influenced by Bollywood, and integrating songs from America and England, one one hand there doesn't seem much uniquely Australian about Moulin Rouge. On the other hand, with 4 out of 10 Australians having at least one migrant parent, Australia has somewhat of a bohemiem culture that integrates the diverse cultures of the world into something new. It is an eye for integration that gives some Australians the ability to blend diverse cultures. It is the lack of a strong native culture that gives cultural creatives the freedom to do so. More...