Read an extract from Australia at the Movies by David Stratton.
Australia's best-loved film critic David Stratton reviews (almost) every feature film from the past three decades in the ultimate guide to modern Australian cinema. From The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to The Dry, from The Big Steal to The Drover's Wife, he tells us why they're worth watching, and reveals fascinating behind-the-scenes details. There is something for everyone: road movies and coming-of-age movies; comedies and love stories; rural noir and gritty urban movies; flourishing First Nations cinema; horror, zombies and science fiction; movies for families and for children; international co-productions, and much more. He's seen them all, and he knows every director, producer and actor.
Here is an extract from this indispensable companion every cinema lover will love!
The peaks and lows that have characterised Australian feature-film production over a period of 30 years are the subject of this survey. My aim has been to provide basic information, and brief critical commentary, on Australian feature films made between 1990 and 2020. I previously published books about Australian films of the 1970s (The Last New Wave, 1980) and the 1980s (The Avocado Plantation, 1990), but they were rather different from the current book, which is effectively an encyclopaedia that attempts to list all of the feature films made over a 30-year period.
The 70s was a decade in which the Australian cinema, which had been virtually dormant for about 30 years, burst into life, thanks to government support (federal and state) and to a new sense of identity and cultural blossoming. Most of the young directors who made their first films in the 70s were interviewed for The Last New Wave, and many of them went on to successful international careers.
The 80s was the decade of tax concessions for the film industry. So many films were made that the level of quality inevitably declined. There were, of course, significant highlights during the decade, but in writing about them for The Avocado Plantation I divided the films into genres rather than placing the major focus on the film directors.
I had always planned to follow these books with one about the 90s, but the pressures of participating in a weekly TV program (and other commitments) intervened, and the years slipped by. So now there’s a lot of catching up to do, and the following pages contain an account of feature film production (and sometimes co-production) over three decades.
I have attempted to include every feature film made in Australia between 1990 and 2020, but as this was a period when an increasing number of films were being made independently and when release patterns were increasingly chaotic, I haven’t been entirely successful in accomplishing this. I have no doubt that some films are missing, but I hope there are not too many of them.
A feature film is usually considered to be a fiction film with a running time of 60 minutes or more—less than that is deemed to be a short film. Initially, my intention was to list only those films made with an eye for cinema distribution, but in recent years—with streaming, downloading and other forms of audio-visual access—the lines have become blurred. I have included some films that screened only at film festivals. Documentaries are not included, as they deserve a volume of their own.
Finally, a word about the dating of films. My policy here is to list the film under the year that appears as a copyright date on the film itself. Other sources list the year in which the film was distributed, but this is not, in my view, a reliable approach. Unfortunately, Australian film producers are often slack about dating their work. Hollywood films released during the first week of January will invariably feature the copyright date of the new year. Australian films rarely if ever manage to do this. Two good examples are Last Cab to Darwin, which had its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2015 but which bears a 2014 copyright date, and Sucker, also dated 2014 but which premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in August 2015. I have listed both films under 2014.
I hope this book will provide useful information and perhaps encourage further investigation and research into some of the forgotten feature films of the last few decades.
Extracted from Australia At The Movies by David Stratton.
Australia At The Movies
by David Stratton
Australia's leading film critic reviews (almost) every Australian feature film from 1990 to 2020.
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