Our film industry may be booming but we don't tell Australian stories

He said the boom in international production had an unintended knock-on effect for smaller, relatively small-budget Australian-made content films that were already struggling to make, from being too expensive to attract local crews and find willing distributors and cinema operators. . to support them “long enough for the audience to find them”.

“They are facing a big blockbuster with a big marketing budget; if these little no-budget Australian films don’t compete, they’ll be gone in a few weeks off screens before people can find them. Cinema operators have to make money.”

Shots with Queensland doubled for Bali: David (George Clooney) and Georgia (Julia Roberts) in Ticket to Heaven.Credit:Universal

“The last thing we wanted was to be a service industry for American films. So many Australian producers who may have produced local films of cultural value are now working as service producers on international projects or for streamers. All that profit and intellectual property goes overseas.”

The federal government agency Screen Australia – through its financial mechanism – is essential in making Australian films and television series. Projects must meet strict Australian content criteria to be eligible, which can include things like the subject of the film or where it was shot.

Thor: Love and Thunder, Elvis and what’s to come Mad Max Furiosa all qualify for offsets, which provide a significant tax deduction.

That incentive, along with her own star power, was instrumental in Nicole Kidman bringing Australian writer Liane Moriarty to life. Nine Perfect Strangers streaming television series production to Byron Bay, but we end up seeing the story set in California (the book is set in Australia) with Australian cast members speaking American, while Kidman’s character appears to be Russian.

How to please women has earned a respectable $2.3 million at the box office.

The Australian Directors’ Guild asked the producer – Kidman’s Blossom Pictures – to have an Australian director attached to the production but it was turned down, reportedly due to COVID-19 restrictions.

That prompted union executive director Diana Burnett to seek Screen Australia’s support in including a provision in the Location Offset rule that stipulates there must be an Australian director’s attachment on all projects that receive incentives, but Screen Australia said it was a matter for the communications minister.

However, there is an unexpected and promising upside to this pandemic for small Australian films, as many major international films are postponed.

In February 2021, it was reported for the first time in the country’s box-office history, that the top three films all feature uniquely Australian stories: drystarring and produced by Eric Bana, Plateau with Simon Baker and chairman Naomi Watts Penguin Bloom.

The boom in Australian film production doesn’t mean we’ll be seeing the likes of Mick Dundee on our screens again any time soon. Credit:most important

“It proves that Australians do have a taste for films that are culturally Australian,” Maslin suspects.

Bain Stewart, who teamed up with Leah Purcell to obtain Driver’s Wife to screens, seemingly battling major obstacles from wildfires to COVID-19, admitting that the film is still playing in theaters nine weeks after release is almost unheard of for local films that tell local stories.

“A lot could go to Leah, who took Henry Lawson’s story and reimagined it for today’s audiences,” Stewart said.

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“It’s like preparing for the Melbourne Cup. We’ve put everything into it, but this project has been going on for years, from stage productions to books, but at the end of the day, it’s the quality of the central story that underpins it all.”

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