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About Australia (Culture) |
| Australian Films | |
| No visitor to Australia these days will be unaware of the popularity and respect for the Australian film industry since the early 1970s. It is generally agreed (with deference to a 1900 Salvation Army promo, Stations of the Cross) that The Story of the Kelly Gang, made by Charles Tait in 1906, was the world’s first feature-length film. Australians’ well-known antagonism towards figures of authority soon led to a hugely popular series of bushranger movies, eventually to be banned in 1912 by the New South Wales police on the grounds that their unsympathetic portrayal in these pictures was corrupting youngsters. | |
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early heyday of Australian film-making predated that of Hollywood
and persisted with the production of various World War I morale boosters,
despite the creation of a distribution duopoly (known as the
“combine”) which showed little interest in independent Australian
films outside its control. With the ending of the war and its many
cinematic testaments to the heroic disaster of Gallipoli, Australian
silent cinema reached a creative peak. Raymond Longford was
Australia’s Spielberg of Silents at this time, and his 1919 production
of The Sentimental Bloke and its sequel, Ginger Mick, a year
later, were popular and notably naturalist dramas about a woman’s taming
of her larrikin husband’s proclivities. Along with the already
established contempt for authority, Longford’s films featured a distrust
of sophistication and formality and, even then, the mythic spell of “the
bush” began to make its mark on Australian productions.
Hollywood domination |
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| Australian
cinema continued to decline as the powerful Hollywood studios got into
their stride and entered the Golden Age of Talkies. In 1933 the mildly
reformed wild boy from Tasmania, Errol Flynn, starred in his first
feature film, In the Wake of the Bounty, directed by Charles
Chauvel, a leading figure in Australian film-making until the late
1950s.
During World War II there was a return to newsreels and documentaries, with the legendary cameraman, Damien Parer, earning Australia’s first Oscar for his account of the fighting in New Guinea (Kokoda Front Line, 1942). Following the war, however, Hollywood’s global domination of cinema was unassailed, and Australian cinema just about perished. Nevertheless, Chips Rafferty turned up as Australia’s answer to John Wayne, appearing in an unremarkable series of formula films, such as the scenically superb epic of bovine migration, The Overlanders (1946). In the 1950s the British Ealing Studios and the American MGM set up production companies in Australia, turning out the odd Outback drama which was watered-down for international consumption (but not success). This era produced few notable Australian films other than Cecil Holmes’ return to the bushranger format in Captain Thunderbolt (1953), and his similarly leftist study of mateship, Three In One (1957). Chauvel’s remarkable Jedda,the Uncivilized (1955) was more unusual in that it tackled the tricky issue of an Aboriginal girl’s white upbringing, sexual temptation and subsequent abduction back to tribal life, where a tragic death inevitably awaited her. If there is one subject Australian cinema still has difficulty in dealing with (the New Wave having finally come to grips with women as individuals), it is that of the Aborigines. Australia was by now nothing more than an exotic, marsupial-speckled location for “kangaroo westerns” and other dramas where British and American actors could exercise their skills. In 1959 Stanley Kramer directed On the Beach, Nevil Shute’s post-Holocaust drama, with Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire tiptoeing through the fallout. A year later Fred Zinnemann directed Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum in The Sundowners, an affectionate classic of Outback itinerant labour. Hot spots for film buffs and soap groupies |
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| The
majestic scenery of the Northern Territory has featured in many films. Kakadu
National Park provided the setting for many of the scenes in Crocodile
Dundee: familiar spots are possibly Anbangbang Billabong and Waterfall
Creek. We of the Never Never was set in the Mataranka
region, which, predictably, has been rechristened “Never Never”
country; some costumes worn in the film are on display in the Old
Courthouse and Residency in Alice Springs.
Desolation and Outback grandeur have a stranglehold on the science-fiction and post-apocalyptic genres. Locations for Mad Max II include the Silverton area of New South Wales; as his parting shot, Mel Gibson upscuttled the semi-trailer on the nearby Mundi Mundi Plains. In South Australia, the pockmarked scenery of Coober Pedy has found favour with many film-makers, including Wim Wenders, who made his epic Until the End of the World here, while the lunar-like landscape was also an invaluable element in creating the atmosphere of Mad Max III. And that Outback pub in Crocodile Dundee was none other than the Walkabout Hotel, at McKinlay in Queensland. More lush surroundings have also caught the imagination: in Victoria the eponymous Hanging Rock, which featured in Picnic at Hanging Rock, is within striking distance of Woodend, but is disappointingly lacking in eeriness. Inevitably, the Sydney area has its fair share of hallowed ground for TV addicts. Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo, or at least the son of Skippy, is the star of Waratah Park. The soapy teenage angst and surfie bonhomie of Home and Away revolves around Palm Beach in Sydney’s northern beaches, with the Barrenjoey Lighthouse and headland regularly in shot. New Wave |
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| The
birth of the New Wave was a response to the burgeoning
counterculture of the late 1960s. Among the many notable reforms of Gough
Whitlam’s Labor government was support for the long-neglected arts.
Film-makers in particular were given a shot in the arm with the
introduction of extremely generous grants to more than cover the cost of
production. While in its early years this financial support helped produce
some of the crassest male-fantasy “sex romps” ever seen (Tim
Burstall’s 1973 Alvin Purple and Terry Bourke’s Plugg
are matchlessly dire), the opening of the Australian Film School in
1973 allowed genuine talents such as Gillian Armstrong, Bruce Beresford
and Paul Cox to flourish.
Two years later, the Australian Film Commission evolved from previous similar organizations to help produce and market Australian films, and although the grants have been regularly reduced ever since, their introduction kick-started the moribund industry so that there presently exists a diverse pool of directors and technicians to keep things going. Peter Weir’s unsettlingly eerie Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) remains an early jewel, and the decade ended with further acclaim for his Gallipoli, Phillip Noyce’s extraordinary Newsfront and Gillian Armstrong’s first feature, My Brilliant Career. Auspicious futures were launched for Armstrong, and actors Sam Neill, Judy Davis and Mel Gibson, whose post-apocalyptic Mad Max trilogy saw a gradual stylistic evolution to suit the huge American market. With the international box office success of Crocodile Dundee in 1985, Australia briefly became a fashionable destination. Indeed, Kakadu National Park owes as much to Peter Faiman’s fish-out-of-water fairy tale for its present popularity as does Uluru (Ayers Rock) to the famous Dingo Baby case; Evil Angels (released in the UK under the title A Cry in the Dark) saw Meryl Streep miscast as Lindy Chamberlain in Fred Schepisi’s 1987 version of those events. Contemporary Australian cinema is perhaps most exceptional for establishing a number of women directors and producers and providing a handful of strong women’s roles. Inevitably, only the mainstream hits, such as the uplifting Strictly Ballroom and Death in Brunswick, have achieved wide overseas release, while many equally fine “small” films remain largely unseen. It is these quirky, uniquely Australian films of which the rejuvenated industry can be most proud. The prestige of numerous and consistent awards at the Cannes Film Festival and others proves that Australia’s long-established cinematographic heritage has, more than any other art form, helped rid the country of its former philistine reputation. Confident and uncompromising films such as Malcolm, Celia, Sweetie and The Year My Voice Broke are just a few that complement their better-known siblings, with 1994 seeing a media-led “renaissance” in Australian film. Stephan Elliot’s sartorially outrageous Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was the country’s biggest box-office success up to that time and won international acclaim, while P.J. Hogan’s wonderful Muriel’s Wedding perfectly encapsulated the indigenous film-making idiom and proved that Australia still could make financially viable and idiosyncratic films. Recent Developments |
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| Recently,
Australian film critics have grown weary of the trend in making “quirky,
offbeat romances”, such as Shirley Barratt’s Love Serenade and
Emma Crogan’s 1996 Cannes hit Love and Other Catastrophes,
although few would have much to complain about with Scott Hicks’
globally acclaimed Shine. Another worthy and uniquely Australian
film released in 1996 was Nick Parsons’ extraordinary Dead Heart.
Describing the decomposing relationships, as well as the clash of white
and tribal law, on an outstation near Alice Springs, the film sensitively
and honestly portrays many aspects of contemporary Aboriginal life (deaths
in custody, illicit grog runs, “payback”, drunkenness and even
sorcery).
While the Liberal government has slashed film funding to the Australian Film Commission and Film Finance Corporation, major actors such as Russel Crowe (Romper Stomper), Nicole Kidman (Batman Forever), Rachel Griffiths (Divorcing Jack), Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth) and Geoffrey Rush (Shine) now work mostly overseas where the pay, recognition and opportunities are much greater. In 1998 box office receipts hit a record A$629.2 million yet Australian films made up only two percent of that and almost all lost money. However, a low Australian dollar, skilled crews and Sydney’s new world-class Fox Studios have attracted major productions such as Dark City,Babe: Pig In The City,The Matrix,Mission Impossible II and Star Wars Episode II to Australia. Melbourne’s developing docklands project includes a Paramount-backed studio that will be ready by 2001 and will also boost the Australian film industry’s facilities, skillbase and reputation. Films to watch out for |
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