'You can't fight the beast' – the battle for the Australian film industry

By SAMANTHA LITTLESON 

Despite Australian cinema making a record breaking $88.1 million in the local box office in 2015, the federal government is again cutting funding from Screen Australia.

More than $7 million in funding is due to be cut in each of the next two financial years from the national body, on top of $5 million cuts in each of the past two.

Concerns have been raised about the diversity and innovation in Australian product and local industry participants are wary about investing their time in an industry that has no place for them.

Screenwriter Luke Rynderman said the Australian film industry was getting less money every year.

“We don’t have a studio system so you either go with funding bodies or private investment,” he said.

“If you see it as an investment and you keep investing in something that doesn’t make a return, why would you fund it?”

To increase this return, Mr Rynderman said Australia needed to be putting more effort into marketing and scheduling the releases of Australian films.

“We just don’t market our films enough. We don’t have the budget to market them … I just think marketing for films is really important.”

Marketing makes a difference: the profitable box office revenue in 2015 was largely attributed to the high budget Mad Max: Fury Road, which was considered a marketing success.

Mr Rynderman said the industry had to be smart about the way it got its films out against Hollywood products.

“You can’t fight Captain America and you can’t fight Wolverine and X-Men. In the past we’ve released Australian films like These Final Hours on the same day as Guardians of the Galaxy,” he said.

“You have to have smarter ways of getting our films out there … you can’t fight the beast.”

Actor Robin McLeavy (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Loved Ones) said the main struggle Australia had with the film industry today was finding audiences.

“What happens often with the funding bodies is that they cater their funding into genre films which they think will pull audiences,” she said.

“Often that results in end-gaming our content, when we should be focusing on developing original stories that express our cultural identity.”

Ms McLeavy said that because the local population was so small and there was so little funding, it was difficult to grow the industry in Australia.

“It’s almost as though Australians don’t consider being a filmmaker a real job because our government doesn’t treat it that way,” she said.

As a result, many of those pursuing a career in the film industry, such as Ms McLeavy, have opted to relocate overseas.

“Australian filmmakers want to go overseas so they can be in on the industry, for example in Hollywood, where living in the industry no matter what’s happening economically, there’s always something going on,” she said.

“It’s really nice to be rewarded financially as an artist because then you feel validated and that allows you to continue doing what you love.”