The Australian film industry sets an example

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 18

The Australian film industry sets an example

AT THE CINEMA

Hans Petrovic

The New Zealand film industry is still in its first stages. Possibly, what this country needs for the development of a viable and healthy system is more money, in the form of Government and other loans, and sufficient interest in its growth by the general public. Unfortunately, good productions like “Sons for the Return Home,” soemhow manage to last for only one week in Christchurch.

This lack of interest is a pity when there is more than enough talent and natural background to start an industry here. The following article, supplied by the Australian Information Service, describes the amazing success of that country’s industry within the last decade. It is not meant as a rebuke but to show what can be possible here: A new generation of Australian film makers has matured in the past decade. An industry, that has twice before flourished and waned in Australia has now firmly taken root as a result of government initiatives in funding and tax concessions. • The new breed of film makers includes the directors, Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi and Brian Tren-chard-Smith, who have been “discovered” by Hollywood and invited to direct films in the United States, Bruce Beresford, Tim Burstall, Gillian Armstrong, Ken Hannam, Tony Ginnane, Don Crombie, Henri Safran, Phil Noyce and Karl Schultz; the producers Hal and Jim McElroy, Patricia Lovell, Phillip Adams, Michael Thornhill, Michael Pate, Matt Carroll, Tom Jeffrey, Tony Buckley, Joan Long and Margaret Fink; and the cinematographers Russell Boyd, Geoff Burton, Don McAlpine, Robin Copping and lan Balter. Since 1970, when the Australian Film Development Corporation was established, nearly 100 films have been made. In its 1978 Budget, the Australian Government offered a tax concession for investment in film making, allowing investors in Australian films 1 to write off their investment in two years instead of 25 years. The concession has attracted investment funds. According to Mr Peter Martin, a commissioner of the Australian Film Commission (formerly the Australian Film Development Corporation), at least six films due for release in 1980 have been funded by private investors taking advantage of this concession. Funds for "The Earthling” for example, produced by Mende-Brown and starring William Holden and child actor Ricky Schroder, came from private investors. Australia is making good films op themes with a strong contemporary relevance, and successful period films drawing on a previously untapped body of Australian literature suitable for screen adaptation.

Many of the films which have been favourably reviewed overseas have been based on Australian novels.

They include “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” based on a mystery story by Lady Joan Lindsay about a party of schoolgirls who go on a picnic on Saint Valentine’s Day in 1900

from which some never return; “Caddie,” based on the anonymous autobiography of a young, woman supporting herself and two children during the Depression of the 19305; “Dot and the Kangaroo,” an animated film based on a children’s story by Ethel Pedley; “Storm Boy,” based on an award-winning children's book by Colin Theile; “Let the Balloon Go,” based on Ivan Southall’s award-win-ning children’s novel, “The Getting of Wisdom,” from an autobiographical novel by Henry Handel Richardson; and My Brilliant Career, from a semi-auto-biographical novel by Miles Franklin.

The Australian Film Commission, Australia's national film-funding body, invested about $9,000,000 in the industry in 1978-79. The government allocation was $6,000,000 and about $2,500,000 to $3,000,000 came from return revenue on film investments. The other major government investors are the state government film corporations. The New South Wales Film Corporation, established in 1977, invested $1,353,000 in last year’s releases. The South Australian Film Corporation, set up in 1972, invested $1,078,000. The Victorian Film Corporation, set up in 1976, had a budget in 1979 of $1,400,000 for feature film investment. The Greater Union Organisation, one of Australia’s three major exhibitordistributor chains, which is 50 per cent owned by the Rank Organisation of Britain, has invested $2,600,000 in 26 Australian films since 1971. The most important dis-tributor-investor of Australian films is Roadshow, the distribution arm of Village Theatres, which is 30 per cent owned by Greater Union. Roadshow set up its own production company, Hexagon, with producer Tim Burstall in 1972 and has produced 12 Australian films. Its most successful film was “Alvin Purple,” a sex comedy which grossed $4,000,000. Hoyts, which is a whol-ly-owned subsidiary of the American 20th Century Fox Corporation, announced in 1979 that it would invest $1,000,000 through the N.S.W. Film Corporation. Between 1906 and 1970, Australians produced more than 370 feature films, but before the current renaissance of film making, the industry had slumped after a string of successful domestic comedies in the 19305.

Before that,, it had gone into an earlier eclipse after the silent movie days, when Australia produced the world’s first feature film, the 914-m “Soldiers of the Cross,” produced by Joseph Perry for the Salvation Army in 1899.

Another early feature was “The Story of the Kelly Gang,” a 1222-m epic running more than an hour, produced in 1906 by the brothers John and Nevin . Tait, > and photographed by Millard Johnson and William Gibson. Both films were more ambitious productions than better-known American feature of 1903, “The Great Train Rob-

bery,” which at 244 m ran for only 20 minutes. Many of Australia's early films were based on its history, particularly outlawed bushrangers. Others were records of sporting events — the annual Melbourne Cup horse race over 3.25 km and the Burns-Johnson fight of 1909. The rest were mostly scenic documentaries.

In 1911, a name emerged which would recur on screen credits until the 19305. Many regard Raymond Longford, an actor and former seaman, as the pioneer of the Australian film industry. Over the next 10 years, Longford made at least 20 feature films. He acted in most, ranging from “The Fatal Wedding,” which introduced Lotte Lyell, the woman Longford made Australia’s first film star, to “The Sentimental Bloke,” based on a poem by Australia’s “aureate of

the larrikin,’ C. J. Dennis. It was photographed by Arthur Higgins using outdoor locations in Sydney’s waterside suburb of Woolloomooloo.

Longford is rated with Ken G. Hall and Charles Chauvel as o'ne of the three giants who carried the Australian industry from infancy through the incorporation of sound to the advent of colour. In the 19305, Hall worked from a sound stage built at a cost of $50,000 (equivalent today to about $2,000,000) by the newly-formed company of Cinesound in Sydney. He took up the works of the Australian writer Steele Rudd, which Longford had already tapped, to bring back to the screen two rural characters called Dad and Dave, who were to become Australia’s equivalent of Ma and Pa Kettle.

Chauvel, whose 30-year

career from 1925 spanned silent and sound periods, produced nine films, among them “Sons of Matthew” and “Forty Thousand Horsemen.” . But each film showed a breadth of vision which earns him his place of honour, exemplified by his insistence on location filming when most other producers were shooting

indoor “quickies” on back projection. With other Australian producers, they had to struggle against intense competition from importers and distributors of overseas-made films. The 1927 Royal Commission into the moving picture industry had done little to protect Australian producers.

By the late 19205, 40 British and American films were being imported a week. Overseas interests dominated distribution outlets so that when Australian films were shown at all they were usually hilled as supporting features.

Chauvel alone seemed ■.ble to blow a puff of vind through the postwar slump with his feature “Jedda,” using untrained Aboriginal actors. Through the 1950 s and 19605, film production in Australia was confined almost to commercials for television and occasional ventures by overseas companies taking advantage of what one called “the biggest outdoor film set in the world” and using Aus-

tralian technicians, or usually in supporting roles, Australian actors.

Protection, especially in the form of government 4

finance, was seen most commonly as the way to revitalise the Australian industry. The long-awaited government support came in 1970 with the establishment of the Australian Film Development Corporation with an initial investment grant of $1,000,000. It built on a nucleus of expertise developed in the dormant film-making period by television and the Commonwealth Film Unit, now known as Film Australia.

A pool of creative directors and skilled technicians had been gaining experience in the production of commercials for Australian television since 1960, when legislation was introduced to allow no more than 10 per cent overseas content to be used in commercials screened on Australian TV.

Statutory requirements for an increasing Australian content in television drama programmes had also given producers, actors and writers the continuity of work and experience vital to develop alent. The transition to a viable feature film, industry has been one of the triumphs of the 19705. Another initiative to build up a local film industry the etsablishment in 1974 of the Australian Film and Television School in Sydney, with a full-time three-year course, is also beginning to bear fruit as graduates swell the ranks of the country’s producers and directors, writers and cL nematographers.