Cinema of Australia

Australia has a long history of film production-in fact, it is claimed that the first feature-length film was actually an Australian production. However, the purchase of virtually all cinemas by American distribution companies saw an almost total disappearance of Australian films from the screens. A notable exception was Charles Chauvel’s classic Jedda (1955). During the late 1960s and 1970s an influx of government funding saw the development of a new generation of directors and actors telling distinctively Australian stories.

Films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and Sunday, Too Far Away had an immediate international impact. The 1980s is regarded as perhaps a golden age of Australian cinema, with many wildly successful films, from the dark science fiction of Mad Max to the blatantly commercial Aussie-bloke fantasy of Crocodile Dundee, a film that defined Australia in the eyes of many foreigners despite having remarkably little to do with the lifestyle of most Australians.

The early 1990s saw a run of successful comedies such as Muriel’s Wedding and Strictly Ballroom, which helped launch the careers of Toni Collette, P. J. Hogan and Baz Luhrmann. The indigenous film industry continues to produce a reasonable number of films each year, also many US producers have moved productions to Australian studios as they discover a pool of professional talent well below US costs. Notable productions include The Matrix and the Star Wars Episode II and III.

The cinema of Australia has a long history-in fact, it is possible that the first feature-length narrative film was the Australian production, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). Australia’s film history has been characterised as ‘boom and bust’, because of the unstable and cyclical nature of the industry, with deep troughs when few films were made for decades and high peaks when a glut of films reached the market.

The first peak occurred in the second decade of the 20th century. After beginning slowly in the years from 1900, 1910 saw 4 narrative films released, then 51 in 1911, 30 in 1912, and 17 in 1913, and back to 4 in 1914, which was the beginning of World War I.[2] Australia was one of the most prolific film-producing countries at the time. The demise of the industry can be seen as a response to falling audience numbers, a lack of interest in Australian product and narratives, or to the decision to participate in World War I.