Where For Art Thou, Aussie Film?

Welcome to the maiden voyage of The Rain Dog's Rant. This blog will essentially be the thoughts and ramblings of yours truly on everything and anything, from politics to pop culture, world events to philosophy to what really grinds my gears.


This initial rant falls under the "grinds my gears/pop culture" heading, as its a topic close to my heart that’s been popping up in the news in the wake of a certain acceptance speech at the AFI Awards on the weekend; the state of the Australian film 'Industry'.

Now, a quick bit of background, I'm a third generation film buff who studied film theory and screenwriting at VCA, as a consequence the state of Australian film has always been close to my heart.

For those who don't know what has helped kick off this particular moment of Aussie filmic hand-wringing and mud-slinging, Fairfax Press's Jim Schembri has been a vocal critic of the state of Australian films for some time now and last Saturday night, during his acceptance speech for best screenwriting, The Black Balloons’ co-writer, Jimmy Jack took his moment in the spotlight to go to the trouble of reading parts of Schembris' negative review of the film and to announce "Fuck You" to the critic, to the applause and cheers of the industry audience.

So for all this self-righteous indignation coming from the industry in question, let me segue with a quick question for you the reader, have a think - what’s the last aussie film you saw at the cinemas? What’s the last aussie film you saw, full stop? Has it been a while? If you're scratching your head trying to think, or if you maybe came up with 'Kenny' as your answer, you're in the same boat as the vast majority of normal movie watching Australians.

Now, to be honest, I have never been a fan of Schembris take on films as a rule, to the point that I look out for the films he enjoys or pans because I know there's a pretty safe bet I'll jump the opposite way, but when it comes to his diagnosis of our so-called Australian Film 'Industry", and it's inability to connect with the very national audience it purports to serve, I simply could not agree more.

For the last 32 years of my life, I have watched as Australian film has descended into an irrelevant low budget arthouse echo chamber where seemingly the only way you can get a film financed in this country is to make sure it stars a Cambodian refugee lesbian midget with downs syndrome on smack and make the story as downbeat and miserable as possible - and of course the film has to have no discernable ending or even third act to speak of.

I'm sympathetic to the notion that our films need to define themselves away from mainstream Hollywood fare and offer a more culturally relevant alternative, I just don't see how sacrificing the basic tenets of story structure and having a natural inclination away from anything bordering on entertainment mainstream Australia wants to see is the way to go about it.

It's as if, in it's desperate attempt to distance itself from the simplistic, low intelligence story-telling Hollywood can often employ in making it's biggest blockbusters, we've also distanced ourselves from what makes those films work and make them entertaining as well. The terms 'baby' and 'bathwater' come to mind.

So here's where we find ourselves, with an industry that has consistently been controlled and financed by a very small intellectual cadre that places no importance on telling stories that the masses will enjoy, because frankly, they couldn’t give a shit about them to begin with. So they make arthouse films, for their arthouse friends at the Australian tax payers expense, and since no one is ever held accountable for this woeful state of affairs, it has not only continued but become entrenched and more prevalent as the years have gone on - to the point that if you're an up and coming screenwriter or director in this country, you either accept the current paradigm and skew your story-telling to what the funding bodies will accept as 'worthy' and 'high-minded' or if, perish the thought, you're more interested in telling a good story in a genre other than glorified-made-for-TV-movie-misery, like say a science fiction tale or whatever, you have to move. So we have a system that essentially encourages a 'creativity drain' overseas.

This is precisely why every time we get an exception to this rule, and have an honest to goodness hit on or hands - that usually bucks the Ken-Loach-by-way-of-the-aussie-suburbs formula and surprise, surprise becomes a hit - from Mad Max 1 and 2 all the way up to Kenny, nothing in the industry changes. No lessons are learned, simply because the people in control have no actual interest in a successful film industry. Seemingly, at this point, they already think it's successful (as displayed by the head-in-the-sand response to Jacks weekend outburst from the self-congratulatory myopic industry audience) - which says it all really.

So, what needs to change exactly? For starters, Screen Australia needs either an entirely new board or get shut down completely. Beauracrats need to stay completely out of the creative process - complete with scrapping guidelines about 'cultural relevance' that hamstring screenwriters and film-makers with politically correct hoops to jump through. When you get art by committee you invariably get bad art. If that can't be done, start loaning film-makers money rather than gifting it to them - if they know they'll have to pay the money back, they may want to make a film that, heaven forfend may at least attempt to get a return on it's investment.

Most of all though, the industry needs to actually wake up and realise how badly it's gone astray. It's a long, long time since Priscilla and Muriels, the last great hit in this country was Kenny, and that was privately funded as Screen Australia wanted nothing to do with it (again - says it ALL). If we want a vibrant living film industry that tells great story's we can be proud of, we need to first point out what’s wrong with the current system and what it produces. That the industry is seemingly incapable of accepting this and will shout down anyone that dares gives the idea voice suggests we are dealing with a culture that will need to have change forced upon it - change will not come from inside.

...because the industry has limped along like this ever since Whitlam, and the psyche is so entrenched that we've finally reached the point that 30 years of politically correct intellectual snobbery combined with the grinding gears of beauracracy have produced an Australian film industry with no relevance to Australians and what they want to see, making sub-standard movies that no one watches except the film-makers friends and mum - all funded at the tax payers expense.

It's is an unmitigated disgrace - and as an Australian lover of film, utterly heart-breaking.