Michael David Walsh

At the edge of Asia: The prospects for Australia-China film co-production

ABSTRACT One of the significant developments in film policy in Australia over the past two decades has been an increased emphasis on international co-productions. Australia and China signed a co-production treaty in 2008, and to date, this has resulted in three films: The Children of Huang Shi (Spottiswoode, 2007), The Dragon Pearl (Andreacchio, 2011) and 33 Postcards (Chan, 2011). This article reviews the opportunities and difficulties involved in co-production between the two countries. It examines potential problems in the differences between the financial and regulatory structures of the two national industries and the ways in which the three films that have been co-produced might be seen as responses to the challenges of making films that would be marketable in both countries. It ends by looking at the changes that have occurred in Chinese film policy in 2012 and the closer relations Chinese film companies have established with globalized Hollywood production. The article suggests that these changes are significant for the prospects of Australian film-makers looking for co-production opportunities with China.

Digital Methods in New Cinema History

During the last decade a new direction has emerged in international research into cinema history, shifting focus away from analysing the content of films to considering their circulation and consumption, and examining the cinema as a site of social and cultural exchange. This body of work distinguishes itself from previous models of film history that have been predominantly constructed as histories of production, producers, authorship, and individual films most commonly understood as texts. This approach has now achieved critical mass and methodological maturity, and has developed a distinct identity as the ‘New Cinema History’.1 In this chapter we describe the emergence and concerns of New Cinema History and its relationship with digital methods and technologies through a discussion of several case studies and projects, focusing particularly on the ‘Mapping the Movies project, which has developed a geodatabase of Australian cinemas, covering the period from 1948 to 1971. The project’s data is used to examine the effects of the introduction of television on the Australian cinema industry, while its structure raises questions about the relationship between the microhistories of particular venues and the individuals attached to them, and larger-scale social or cultural history represented by the cinema industry’s globally organized supply chain.

The film exhibitors’ Royal Commission

In adopting the perspective of the New Cinema History movement, which endeavours to shift the focus of film history away from questions of texts and their production, this article provides an overview of the Royal Commission that concentrates on the central place of exhibition within the Australian film industry. The two areas of enquiry here concern the relation of exhibitors to distributors and to audiences. This assumes that exhibition operates as a hinge point in national cinema, connecting local audiences with global distribution companies. The first part of the article examines the nature of distribution contracts and the ways in which exhibitors competed against each other, rather than simply seeing them as struggling with Hollywood. The second part foregrounds testimony given to the Commission concerning the constitution and behaviour of audiences. The article concludes with the proposition that Australian audiences have consistently failed to behave in accordance with certain broadly held social principles and that the role of the Commission was not to stimulate the production sector, but rather to find rhetorical ways of addressing the problems represented by exhibition and audience practices.

From the Outback to the Background: Indian Films in Australia

ABSTRACT The rise of Indian film within Australia at the level of production, distribution and exhibition is one of the most important transformations in the Australian cinema landscape over the past decade. Despite Australian efforts to attract runaway Hollywood production, Indian films currently constitute the major international production component in Australia. These films represent notable departures from received notions of Australian film production: they foreground urban cosmopolitanism in Australia rather than rural landscape-based cinema, and they are responsive to state government policies rather than federal ones. The exhibition and distribution of Indian films has also become a major component in any description of Australian national cinema that incorporates the circulation and consumption of films. Indian films currently represent 10 per cent of the films released commercially in Australia. This article tracks the performance of Indian films at the Australian box office and argues that their presence and positioning in Australian cinema challenges traditional notions of the limits of diasporic cinema. Despite this increased prominence, Indian films remain a comparatively small part of Australian cinema consumption, and this article ends by trying to explain the factors that will need to be overcome for a continued expansion of this type of film consumption within Australia.