Industry resurgence

Press, 4 September 1980, Page 14

Industry resurgence

By I

DAVID ROBINSON,

of

“The Times” of London.

The “Australian Miracle” of the 70s -— like most comparable . resurgences of .creative talent in the cinema — did not come about because the. Almighty chose that moment to put* on Antipodean earth an assorted package of Peter ..Weirs, Bruce Beresfords, Philip Noyces, Fred Schepisis arid Gillian Armstrongs.

Like previous renaissances in Sweden, Cuba, West Germany and Eastern Europe, it can be directly attributed to enlightened . governmental intervention.

Just 10 years ago, John Gorton pushed through legislation to fund an Australian Film and Television Development Corporation, which became the Australian Film Commission, .• and an experimental film fund. . In 1973, the Whitlam Government brought into being a national film and television school- and: put at .its head Jerzy Toeplitz, who as dean of the Lodz Film Academy had been a root influence on the formation of the modem Polish cinema.

In the last four years, State film commissions have been set up in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia, with funds and powers to finance production.

The total annual sum these commissions administer between them would scarcely finance one of today’s Hollywood bigbudget features. But the results so far achieved have been truly miraculous.

In 10 years, Australia has produced upwards of 150 feature films. In the same period, more than 80 new directors ’ have emerged, of whom a respectable number, like Weir, Beresford, Noyce, Schepisi and Armstrong, can command international attentiori. ■ , '

Australian films have penetrated to countries which had hitherto remained unconscious of a distinctive Australian cultural identity. Above all, a few films,' like “Picnic At Hanging Rock,’ “The Last Wave,” “Patrick,” “Mad Max” and “My Brilliant Career,” have broken into the proverbially impregnable American market. The new cinema appears in fact, finally to have fulfilled the dream, so constantly frustrated in the preceding 60 years, of a regular' Australian film production industry.

Moving pictures came to Australia as early as 1896 and “The Story of the Kelly Gang,” filmed in 1906, was one of the world’s first feature films, exceeding one hour’s running time. By 1911, the country had 10 production companies and an output of 50 fiction films.

Three years later, both production companies and productions had shrunk to less than half the number as a result of distribution and exhibition monopolies, whicn had no time for home production when imported films could bring faster, easier and bigger money. -? ■ In the 20s, the threat of government legislation to introduce quotas for British Empire, and Australian pictures stirred the . big distribution and exhibition

interests to engage, if intermittently, in production.' .

The films of Cinesound, sponsored by the mono- . lithic Australasian Films and Union Theatres, between 1932 and 1948,. hold an honourable place in the story of Australian ■ cinema.

Despite all the discouragements, individuals still managed to make an authentic Australian contribution to film history, as a. recent National Film Theatre retrospective showed.

Among these lone heroes are Reginald Longford, whose “The Sentimental Bloke” (1919) and “On Our Selection” (1920) merit a place in any anthology of silent cinema; Ken G. Hall, an honest craftsman and honourable showman, who shaped the artistic policies of Cinesound (where the young Peter Finch made his film debut), and Charles Chauvel, whose major activity was in the years of the second world .war, when he first gave definition to the legendary personality of Chips Rafferty. The artists of the new Australian cinema honour these trail brazers and in return Ken G. Hall still takes a vigorous interest in the work of his spiritual children.

There is, however, little real sense of continuity between them, except in certain shared indigenous Australian qualities, robust ■ and self-deprecating comedy on the one hand, on the other an enduring fascination with the vast landscape,. and with the formative relationship of that environment and the individual. (To be continued).