Subsidies for foreign blockbusters while Australian voices are silenced
The Age January 7, 2016
Sharon Connolly
The government's handouts to Hollywood producers shows contempt for our local industry.
The week before Christmas, Treasurer Scott Morrison announced that $47.3 million spent to entice Hollywood blockbuster productions in the Thor series and the Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant to shoot in Australia would largely be funded with $35 million earned from the sale of Screen Australia's studio complex at Lindfield on Sydney's north shore.
The balance will come from cutting the budgets of other arts agencies, including – once again – that of Screen Australia.
It's a tragic postscript to a story that began with great hopes for Australian filmmaking and the power of film to speak for and about ourselves. Now that story has ended in a devastating no-confidence vote from our own government. Not only has it sold a significant Australian cultural asset, it has given the proceeds of the sale to productions initiated and controlled by US-based corporations 20th Century Fox and Disney.
Filmmaker Peter Weir was one of many Australian artists who learnt his craft at the Lindfield Film Australia complex.
The Lindfield complex was purpose-built in the early 1960s to house the Commonwealth Film Unit, established soon after World War II. It was later to become known as Film Australia, and before the government-backed resurrection of an Australian film industry in the 1970s it was among a handful of production companies that kept Australian filmmaking alive.
Lindfield was the place where directors Peter Weir and Jane Campion, cinematographer Dean Semmler and producer John Edwards made some of their earliest work. They were among many creative people who learnt and developed their skills there.
Corporatised late in the 1980s, Film Australia continued to work closely with a relatively young independent production sector, creating pathways for some of today's most admired feature film and television talents, including Tony Ayres (Cut Snake), Liz Watts (Animal Kingdom), Kath Shelper (Samson and Delilah) and Sue Brooks (Looking for Grace).
Director Jane Campion is a veteran of Lindfield.
Director Jane Campion is a veteran of Lindfield.
It also housed developing facilities and service companies in the private sector; the first Dolby soundtrack for a feature film (for Mad Max 2) was made on site at Lindfield.
Even more significantly, it was home to a documentary production enterprise that made programs in the national interest. Film Australia made many films for government information purposes, programs that had essentially propagandistic intentions and have come to be seen as an invaluable photo album of Australian life in decades following World War II.
It also produced renowned documentaries such as the Oscar winning animation Leisure, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, Rats in the Ranks, Mabo – Life of an Island Man, Who Killed Dr Bogle and Mrs Chandler, Cunnamulla, Wildness, and series such as Federation, Australian Biography and Our Century.
In 1997, Richard Alston, then minister for communications and the arts, declared Film Australia to be "the jewel in the documentary crown". He was announcing the government's decision to maintain Film Australia – together with its studio complex – as a government-owned company working in the national interest.
In the following years, additional funds were allocated to maintaining the company's heritage film collection and to upgrade buildings and facilities at Lindfield, shared with a growing number of private-sector screen businesses and artists.
Subsequent governments didn't agree with Alston and in 2008 the company was merged with two other film agencies to become Screen Australia.
The 1988 film Cane Toads, an Unnatural History, an early documentary by Mark Lewis.
Custody of Film Australia's collection of programs and titles – an enormous body of work covering more than a century of filmmaking in Australia – was handed to the National Film and Sound Archive. However, the Lindfield site lived on and was managed by Screen Australia to provide offices and facilities for independent screen businesses and productions.
This year the complex was offered on the international market and subsequently sold for residential development. Few voices were raised in opposition, though there were competing ideas about how the proceeds of the sale might be applied.
Perhaps naively, it was hoped Screen Australia might use some of the money to plug gaps created by earlier federal budget cuts, which have forced the closure of vital training agencies Metroscreen in NSW and Wide Angle Tasmania and created significant shortfalls in finances available for documentary production.
Also proposed were schemes to use funds derived from the Lindfield sale to offer greater support for Indigenous filmmaking, new distribution activities, and more active management of the Film Australia heritage collection at the National Film and Sound Archive.
Dismissing such ideas, Scott Morrison has instead provided hand-outs to enormously wealthy US corporations for the production of films with no Australian relevance.
Prometheus and Thor may create short-term work for Australian actors, film technicians and service companies, but they will leave behind little of lasting cultural or economic value to the nation.
Worse still, they will perpetuate the culturally cringing idea that Australian stories and those who tell them are of lesser value than those from larger English-speaking nations.
It's a symbolic and insulting move, one that reeks not only of contempt for the past, present and future of our screen production sector, but also for Australian audiences.
Clearly our leaders, unlike those of the post-war decades, lack faith in Australians' capacities to make and appreciate film, television and online programs that speak for and about ourselves.
Sharon Connolly was chief executive and managing director of Film Australia Ltd from 1997 to 2004.
Read more:
The Age January 7, 2016
Sharon Connolly
The government's handouts to Hollywood producers shows contempt for our local industry.
The week before Christmas, Treasurer Scott Morrison announced that $47.3 million spent to entice Hollywood blockbuster productions in the Thor series and the Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant to shoot in Australia would largely be funded with $35 million earned from the sale of Screen Australia's studio complex at Lindfield on Sydney's north shore.
The balance will come from cutting the budgets of other arts agencies, including – once again – that of Screen Australia.
It's a tragic postscript to a story that began with great hopes for Australian filmmaking and the power of film to speak for and about ourselves. Now that story has ended in a devastating no-confidence vote from our own government. Not only has it sold a significant Australian cultural asset, it has given the proceeds of the sale to productions initiated and controlled by US-based corporations 20th Century Fox and Disney.
Filmmaker Peter Weir was one of many Australian artists who learnt his craft at the Lindfield Film Australia complex.
The Lindfield complex was purpose-built in the early 1960s to house the Commonwealth Film Unit, established soon after World War II. It was later to become known as Film Australia, and before the government-backed resurrection of an Australian film industry in the 1970s it was among a handful of production companies that kept Australian filmmaking alive.
Lindfield was the place where directors Peter Weir and Jane Campion, cinematographer Dean Semmler and producer John Edwards made some of their earliest work. They were among many creative people who learnt and developed their skills there.
Corporatised late in the 1980s, Film Australia continued to work closely with a relatively young independent production sector, creating pathways for some of today's most admired feature film and television talents, including Tony Ayres (Cut Snake), Liz Watts (Animal Kingdom), Kath Shelper (Samson and Delilah) and Sue Brooks (Looking for Grace).
Director Jane Campion is a veteran of Lindfield.
Director Jane Campion is a veteran of Lindfield.
It also housed developing facilities and service companies in the private sector; the first Dolby soundtrack for a feature film (for Mad Max 2) was made on site at Lindfield.
Even more significantly, it was home to a documentary production enterprise that made programs in the national interest. Film Australia made many films for government information purposes, programs that had essentially propagandistic intentions and have come to be seen as an invaluable photo album of Australian life in decades following World War II.
It also produced renowned documentaries such as the Oscar winning animation Leisure, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, Rats in the Ranks, Mabo – Life of an Island Man, Who Killed Dr Bogle and Mrs Chandler, Cunnamulla, Wildness, and series such as Federation, Australian Biography and Our Century.
In 1997, Richard Alston, then minister for communications and the arts, declared Film Australia to be "the jewel in the documentary crown". He was announcing the government's decision to maintain Film Australia – together with its studio complex – as a government-owned company working in the national interest.
In the following years, additional funds were allocated to maintaining the company's heritage film collection and to upgrade buildings and facilities at Lindfield, shared with a growing number of private-sector screen businesses and artists.
Subsequent governments didn't agree with Alston and in 2008 the company was merged with two other film agencies to become Screen Australia.
The 1988 film Cane Toads, an Unnatural History, an early documentary by Mark Lewis.
Custody of Film Australia's collection of programs and titles – an enormous body of work covering more than a century of filmmaking in Australia – was handed to the National Film and Sound Archive. However, the Lindfield site lived on and was managed by Screen Australia to provide offices and facilities for independent screen businesses and productions.
This year the complex was offered on the international market and subsequently sold for residential development. Few voices were raised in opposition, though there were competing ideas about how the proceeds of the sale might be applied.
Perhaps naively, it was hoped Screen Australia might use some of the money to plug gaps created by earlier federal budget cuts, which have forced the closure of vital training agencies Metroscreen in NSW and Wide Angle Tasmania and created significant shortfalls in finances available for documentary production.
Also proposed were schemes to use funds derived from the Lindfield sale to offer greater support for Indigenous filmmaking, new distribution activities, and more active management of the Film Australia heritage collection at the National Film and Sound Archive.
Dismissing such ideas, Scott Morrison has instead provided hand-outs to enormously wealthy US corporations for the production of films with no Australian relevance.
Prometheus and Thor may create short-term work for Australian actors, film technicians and service companies, but they will leave behind little of lasting cultural or economic value to the nation.
Worse still, they will perpetuate the culturally cringing idea that Australian stories and those who tell them are of lesser value than those from larger English-speaking nations.
It's a symbolic and insulting move, one that reeks not only of contempt for the past, present and future of our screen production sector, but also for Australian audiences.
Clearly our leaders, unlike those of the post-war decades, lack faith in Australians' capacities to make and appreciate film, television and online programs that speak for and about ourselves.
Sharon Connolly was chief executive and managing director of Film Australia Ltd from 1997 to 2004.
Read more:
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