In any other "industry" account books like those for Australian film in 2008 would call for immediate voluntary liquidation. On a 10 year average Australian film accounts for around 4.5% of total theatrical revenues each year. In 2008 it was less than 1% of total ticket sales, the lowest figure since records of such things began to be kept some 30 years ago. Following hard on the heels of similarly poor financials in 2007, the government response - the establishment of a new central funding agency, Screen Australia, complete with an imported CEO, New Zealander, Dr Ruth Harley - looks remarkably like a shuffling of deck chairs on a seriously foundering ship. The new regime promises a more selective investment schedule that favours track record but a straw poll of Australian film-makers indicates little hope that anything is about to change for the better. Is there any way that it could? Is this even a justifiable question?
The core problem is that Australians do not want to watch Australian film. The reality is that Australians (like film audiences around the world with perhaps the exception of India) want to watch Hollywood films. And a glance at the box office results in any week of the year will attest this, literally, has nothing to with quality.
With this reality in mind it is often suggested by film journalists and related commentators that the Australian film industry has been brought low by self-regarding "arty" government funding agencies and that the answer to the problem is for Australian film-makers to make audience-pleasing genre movies in the Hollywood-style. This is, however, a completely bogus argument that has been raised periodically since the 1930s. "In the Hollywood-style" is exactly that, and whilst, as Not Quite Hollywood, Mark Hartley's 2008 documentary showed us so well, the results may have some crude appeal (predominantly to an intrigued overseas audience) they do not constitute a sustainable business or cultural model for Australian film-makers.
The appeal of Hollywood is a combination of big budget production values, celebrity stars and, most importantly, the gloriously escapist fantasies of which it is the undisputed master. No Australian film has or is ever likely to be able to reproduce that combination. Baz Luhrmann's much maligned US-Australian co-production, Australia, was the closest attempt at doing so and yet whilst it dominated all other domestic releases this year, both in terms of media coverage and its $30m in ticket sales, it is not within cooee of recovering even its $150m production costs, let alone the costs involved in its distribution and marketing.
Whilst some of the best Australian films are independently funded, Son Of A Lion in 2008, The Jammed in 2007 for instance, the films that define us culturally do tend be tax-payer funded simply because the ingredients required to make emotionally and artistically rewarding films comes from more than a commercially-motivated desire to put bums on seats
The truth of the matter, economically and culturally, is that Australian film-making must be sustained by the tax-payer. That the same tax-payer is uninterested in seeing how his and her tax dollars are being spent in no way should be taken as an indicator of the failure or irrelevancy of the Australian film industry, which if neglected at home is often more appreciated overseas, not least in Hollywood itself, where actors like Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger, directors like Fred Schepisi, and Peter Weir, cinematographers like Russell Boyd and John Seale, composers like Lisa Gerard and David Hirschfelder are sought after names. On a per capita basis the calibre of Australian talent is quite extraordinary.
The danger is that the continuing carping on the poor box office figures of Australian films by commentators as if this vindicated their argument that the industry is misguided and mismanaged (which it does not) will only add to the already difficult lot of Australian film-makers. The problem, if one grants there is one, it not with Australian films but with Australian audiences. Whilst changing audience attitudes is a Herculean task, on a micro level it would be assisted by a more responsible position taken by commentators including film reviewers whose purported impartiality often comes across as passive aggression (and let it be noted that there are plenty of Australian films such as 2007's Home Song Stories that do not find an audience despite enthusiastic critical praise). Even if this means focusing on the industry's and individual film's achievements over their shortcomings this would be demonstrate a real contribution to fixing the perceived problem rather than perpetuating its existence.
The greatest danger is that the funding bodies react to this criticism by trying to play safe. For this is not only unlikely to produce better results but is likely to penalize younger or less experienced film-makers. It would be much better to take note of A-List Hollywood scriptwriter William Goldman's memorable statement that when it comes to making successful films "nobody knows anything". Control stymies creativity, enthusiasm, originality and all the other qualities that are required to produce significant Australian film Film-making is not a horse race and whether a film is commercially successful is independent of its artistic and cultural merits (it should be noted that the majority of Hollywood films lose money on their theatrical release). Rather than trying to pick winners it would be better to understand film "investment" as artistic philanthropy and see its benefits within the context of the longer term project of building an independent cultural identity. . The fact that we live in a culture that recoils at the merest suggestion of "art" and presumes that every form of human activity is quantifiable by either a scoreboard or a loss and profit sheet should not be allowed to deter those with desire to express their viewpoints in film.