Mirror Mirror On The Wall, Are Aussie Movies Good At All?

Read an article shared by a friend on Facebook today and I frowned. It is another one of those why do Australians don’t watch Australian movies articles. I frowned not because I am an Australian actor and nobody is watching Australian movies. I frowned because of the whole narrow view about Australian movies and the incomplete picture that it presented. At the end it kind of redeemed itself by saying something more objective but then it was a quote from someone else not the writer’s personal view point.

It is a known secret that Australian films are not doing well in local box office. This could be contributed by multiple factors. Is it about the points that the article raised? Being too dark? Ocker stereotypes? Critics fault etc etc. I engaged in a few discussion about this on the post and it is quite obvious for me personally that Australian movies are not engaging for the audience. For me the first step to engagement is about establishing relationship with the audience. And one of the main flaws of this article was that it completely ignored quite a number of successful movies that do not lie within the writer’s framework of Australian movies. They include:

Mao’s Last Dancer – 2.7m

The Sapphires – 14.2 m

Samson and Delilah – 3.1m

Rabbit Proof Fence – 4m (6.10m)

Japanese Story – 4.5m

Lantana – 6.1m

Somersault – 2.1m

Little Fish – 3.8m

Animal Kingdom – 4.3m

Please note that figures quoted are only Australian box office so they do not include the gross number around the world.

From the list above you can see these movies represented a great diversity of productions and were considered as successful. For me I wonder why they were not included in the discussion of Australian movies by the writer. From what I read, the movies cited as Australian were mostly Anglo centric, which in my view is just a subset of what Australian movies were about. When you consider the list above you will notice that there are a number of movies that represented Australia’s diversity and did very well at the box office. If you want to just consider a subset within a subset i.e. a subset of Anglo centric movies within a subset of failed box office project, of course it would seem that nobody cares about Australian films at all. But is that the truth?

Further the writer considered The Great Gatsby as an Australian movie, why Mao’s Last Dancer was not? And why was Moulin Rouge not cited as an example? For me we can’t just pick and choose convenient “facts” and presents them as the full picture. Certainly there are a lot of failed Australian film projects, but then half-baked pictures would not help to improve the situation.

Then it is the engagement and relationship issues that I raised earlier Personally I do not find a lot of them very engaging. It seems to me a number of projects are what I considered as toothache literature – things that only you can feel but nobody cares. At the same time it seems to me some funders or funding authority stakeholders are like parents who love to spoil their kids and kept on feeding them candies that worsen the situation. When it get worse and all swollen up, it is the audience’s fault and they expect the audience to be dentists to fill the cavity and ease the pain. This kind of immature approach to film making might work if you have a big industry but this simply doesn’t exist in Australia. Personal stories are great, artistic stories are marvelous but then if you want to have an industry to be able to sustain itself with continuous funding, you need revenue and revenue can only come from box office and box office can only come from productions that relate to the audience.

Then there were accusations of talents not staying in Australia. The fact is that the Australian industry did little to nothing to encourage talents to stay. A friend of mine’s experience in getting his film project up and running with local funding authorities seriously signaled how lack of respect these stakeholders have for talents. Also my friend’s experience of nearly being exploited during the process by these stakeholders so their friends could have a finger in the pie further reflected how immature and lack of system it is in Australia. People wanted to go overseas because they have to. The producers and writers of the Saw series were knocked back everywhere in Australia because the stakeholders told them there is nobody who wants to watch that kind of film. They were wrong obviously. The whole franchise scored 873m worldwide. Australian actors go overseas because projects were not facilitating developing new talents. So talents who can’t find work or talents to start to have a name needed to go overseas to sustain a career. And the situation that they could then be invited back to become leads in Australian projects further cemented the necessity to go overseas to make it first. So I wonder whether it is fair for some people to blame talents exporting themselves at all.

The less than rosy situation of the Australian film industry is not ideal but I do believe before pointing fingers at the audience and the talents, critics and key stakeholders in the industry should find a magic mirror to ask the question first to have a reality check. Only by admitting their own responsibilities in this “mess” could help them out. Otherwise the industry will only become rare species of animals that had no choice but to continue to inbreed and drove themselves to their own extinction.

The Value of Art

I recently attended an interview for a Knowledge Management position with a private business. At the opening of the interview, the interviewer was asking me about my involvement in acting and creative arts. She said it is a very unusual combination when knowledge management is about discipline and standardization and acting is about creativity and thinking out of the box. I replied saying that while we need to keep our work processes tightly organized in order to provide standardizations and responsible growth, it is essential that traditions do not tie us down. Creative arts is to help us thinking creatively and out of the box so the organization can continue to grow with new ideas that keep them abreast with or even ahead of time, trends and developments. The interviewer seemed very happy with my answer and I think we had a great interview as she did comment that in a few sentences she already knew I know my stuff.

I have yet to receive another call for this job, but the conversation and a recent speech given by Cate Blanchett when she accepted her honourary degree from Macquarie University did get me think about how I valued art in my life and tried tirelessly to keep that alive.

Creative art has always been an important part in my life and I have always placed a high value on it. I remembered when I attended my one and only TOEFL examination as a teenager they had newly introduced a writing segment in the test. I still remember the question was about the value of art and culture in a society. I was on fire in my response and could not stress enough how important it is for art and culture to be an integral part of our society. I eventually got a full mark for that portion of the test and I was quite happy about it.

I have never been a standard kind of guy who just wants to live a standard kind of life. That of course does not make life any easier for me. However, my emphasis and stress on creative art did provide a lot of buffer for me to stay creative and sane at the same time. I could be happy by just listening to a good piece of music, watching a good movie or play or even reading a good play or book. That kind of happiness has ripple effects on me when I am down and have to faced difficulties in life. It gives me the energy and power to think in a less traditional way and thus avoiding me cornering myself mentally. I might still not be able to figure out a viable solution immediately as some of the real life issues are very pressing and menacing, and no creativity could provide instant solutions for them. However, art does help to provide a bigger playground for me so I have more space to move around in my thoughts. It also provides a bit more positive energy that I need to face these difficulties. Does that mean I don’t worry? No, but it makes me more at ease with situations.

In the wake of this Australian government marginalizing art and creativity through cutting funding for ABC and SBS out of their own political agenda, I felt extremely sad and disappointed with the society we are living in. Art has become a valued commodity in Australia and a lot of time art is about power and whom you know instead of real talent and creativity. If you do not fit into the boxes authorities created for themselves, you probably won’t get a chance to crack it. The current approach of the Australian government to art had stifled its imagination and development in the same way as some totalitarian governments that the Australian government condemned did. Are we qualified to criticize others while we are standing on the same continuum but just a bit behind?

It might sound silly and unrealistic for me to insist on my creative pursuit while trying to make a living in a non-creative art profession. For me both things don’t necessarily need to be segregated. We just need to find a balance. And to find that balance, we need to start with our mind because that is where system and creativity work together. For me art and creativity should not have an expiration date in our life.

I think at the end of the day it is about what you believe in. I believe in a life that earning a living, creating art, appreciate science and engaging in sports can co-exist and enrich each other. I might not see that change in this so called current “Australian way of life” as propagated by this Australian government, but as long as I can I will continue to push this believe forward because you never know what change this could bring when you expected it to.