Overview of the Australian Film Industry

In chapter two of The Cultures of American Film, the main focus is the establishment of studios. As demand for films rose in the early 1900’s, production companies needed to expand; this lead to the creation of large scale studios.

This paper was prepared for Introduction to Film History, Module 1 Homework Assignment, taught by Professor Stephanie Sandifer.

Film in Australia has a large part of the Australian lifestyle and has had many major changes in Popular Culture from 1945 to the present. The first film to be released was the Ned Kelly Gang in 1945. Australia has produced many successful films during this time and has had many influences on Australian pop culture. During the 1940s and 1950s the film industry was lacking from Government policy changes

In cinema’s early days, the film industry was based in New York, the nation’s theatrical center. Most movies were being filmed in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, and Florida. However, by the 1920’s, southern California had become the leading film capital due to its cheap land and labor. Films gained their popularity after Vaudeville actors striked in 1901. This left theaters scrambling for acts and films became the main event. Silent films were widely popular in the early 1920’s and were usually accompanied by live piano or organ music. Talking-pictures were first introduced in 1923, but did not become popular until 1927.

To understand why Australian movies are the way they are now, there must be a review of the history of the films produced in Australia, because through out time, the films have had successes as well as some failures.

This further demonstrates how the affluence of that period enabled people to support this industry and help its enormous growth. It was during the roaring 20s that the first real celebrities began to appear, with the ever-increasing role of cinema having a huge role to play. Similarly their fame contributed to the growing status of Hollywood and the American film industry. (Source J). Charlie Chaplin is one example of an actor that gained worldwide recognition in the twenties; he was particularly famous for his ‘highly visual style of acting’ (Soucre J). The 1920s was often referred to as “The Golden Age of Hollywood” (Source G) emphasizing how this period represents the era of greatest output in the United States movie market [an average of 800 films were produced annually]. ‘The cinema came of age in the 1920s and Hollywood confirmed its position as the “dream factory” of the English- speaking world. It was there that fame and fortune could be found.’ (Source J) This also highlights the growing image of Hollywood ‘throughout the roaring 20s, which started to represent wealth and achievement. ‘The establishment of the Academy Awards showed the maturing cinema as an industry confident of its own technical and artistic standards.’ (Source J) This further shows how there were many other expansions and transformations from this industry that occurred during this period. Artists, directors and other personalities of the film making industry received acknowledgement and recognition of their work in this industry. ‘The awards soon acquired international status’ (Source J) showing how Hollywood’s film industry developed into a global sensation that was supported by people all over

Australia’s film and television industry has experienced drastic changes since the rise of national cinema. Leading the world film industry, Australia was home to the first film studio and feature film at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) toured England from 1908 as the longest film ever made, popularising a new genre of bushranger movies and epitomising the Ned Kelly legend as a significant aspect in Australian cultural identity (Juddery, 2008). The beginning of Australia’s film industry built itself on bushranger films, with the focus being local audiences rather than foreign, as stated by Judder. However, power struggles within the industry and banning of the bushranger genre saw to the quick demise of the film industry in 1912. Another aspect contributing to the demise is the emergence of competition with Britain and the US releasing two feature films each to Australia’s eight, later decreasing to three against the US’ 212 in 1914. Soon thereafter, the industry was dominated by foreign productions. This is evidenced in the 1994 documentary Celluloid Heroes, which states that “during one week in 1959, 1500 fine dramatic actors appeared on Melbourne television, and only 5 Australians”, resulting in the 1960 Postmaster-General Charles Davidson to implement local content requirements, beginning with TV stations required to broadcast 40 per cent Australian content every 28 days with four hours in peak time, which was

The poor distribution of Australian films has made it difficult for the public to view these said films, due to the lack of theatres screening the actual pictures. This contributes to the community of the Australian public to collectively be unaware of these films and leads to the small number of tickets sold in cinemas. With this lack of money being spent on Australian films, the industry suffers due to with no return going into the

During this time the film studios grew in power, new stars and directors were discovered and the eight major studios produced more than 7500 feature films. “These films were released by the studios to audiences eager to be entertained. More than 80 million people attended at least one film per week. This period enjoyed the greatest collection of talent gathered in one place.” (Motion Pictures, The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2001)

With a wave of patriotism following the war, Canada still had the potential to build its industry, with numerous independent Canadian production companies in operation.4 However, the American film industry was flourishing, with the advantage of a larger urban population and strengthened economy.5 As a result, Canada has been trying to come out with a workable film policy for years to support homegrown films, an effect that can still be sensed today. The National Film Board of Canada was then created, originally as an advisory board to coordinate production, but later shifting towards active production. By 1945, the NFB became one of the world’s largest film studios, with a staff of 800 people and more than 500 films released, shown monthly in Canadian and foreign theatres.6 It was a leading producer of world-class documentaries, animation and experimental films, and its productions have won more than 5,000 international awards. Despite critical success, the NFB “did little to solve the problem posed by the dominance of foreign films”; 7 they brought little commercial success or attention from

The story of the Kelly gang was the first feature film. It was made in 1906, it is an Australian film that uses no word or music. This movie was shot around the city of Melbourne the film ran for more than an hour with a reel length of 1,200 metres! It was the longest narrative film in the world! It was first presented in the Melbourne'a athenaeum hall on 26 December 1906.

By 1909 there was around 9,000 cinemas across America and the year before that a union named MPMO was created to protect the rights of movie projectionists. A usual film was only a single reel long which was ten to twelve minutes in length and the performers where left anonymous because acting in a movie was considered humiliating compared to stage acting thus the actors were never recognized by name. Other things such as the first stunt was performed in the 1910’s it was a man jumped into the Hudson River from a burning balloon and max factor created a specially formulated make up for movies. In 1910s the first female French film maker named Alice Guy Blache joined the film industry, so far she is only woman to own and run her own studio

is growing outside of the USA. This kind of growth includes the large countries that previously specialised in film production. For countries such as China and India, the annual release of films has grown progressively for the past decade, followed by a forced growing purchase power and investments in cinemas (Lorenzen, M. 2008). The American film industry must, in a way, watch its back. Especially when the amount of small film countries, such as Denmark and Switzerland, has grown. The smaller countries have attracted attention by not only up-scaling their production, but also winning market shares from Hollywood. Other new filmmaking countries are also on the rise, with Korea, Mexico etc. joining the market, who bring cheaper production technologies to their advantage (Lorenzen, M. 2008).

The modern film industry was born around the beginning of the twentieth century. On April 23rd 1896 Thomas Edition showed the first publicly-projected motion picture at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. From there the film industry had an explosive growth rate. In fact,

Colombia's population, ranked as the third most populated South American country, seems to have a ready audience for the film industry to tap. On the contrary though, the Colombian government has failed to develop an elaborate film industry. One of the major reasons for this is the tendency of the local population preference for foreign Hollywood movies. Although Colombia has had an abundant production of soap operas and documentaries, it is still far from achieving top notch film industry. Moreover, civil wars and political instability has dented the film industry in Colombia. However, Colombia has a well defined folk culture that many of the would-be cinema goers are engaged in (Stock, 1997, pg 60).