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What's Wrong With The Oz Film Industry?


Possibly nothing. Maybe there are too many w**kers complaining that there's something wrong with the Australian film industry. Often you'll discover these people write columns in the trouble-free, profitable, circulation-on-the-rise world of newspapers. Attacking the ABC or the AFI, AFC or FFC is so much simpler than admitting you're on a sinking ship that is also on fire.

No comparison? Maybe. What seems to irk the newspaper experts is that public broadcasters and the state and national funding bodies are not as market-driven as newspapers have to be, by their nature. These public institutions often get it wrong. Newspapers often get it wrong. But no public money is expended when that happens.

So I guess the answer is to make The Oz Film Industry solely market-driven. Then all the films would be good like KENNY and not artsy, depressing, out of touch and terrible.

We should be as successful as Bollywood and Hollywood, obviously. Or at least other nations whose populations are similar to our own. Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Peru, Yeman and of course English-speaking CANADA! All these countries have thriving market-driven film industries whose product is sold around the world and is critically acclaimed at home and abroad. No?

Or maybe our film-industry is quite like the other faltering, government-assisted film industries of a number of other countries and this need to see us take on the world in equal terms comes from a 1970s notion of Australian filmmaking and its place in the world.

You know how we always feel a little cheated at the Olympics when Australia isn't in the top five of the medal count? You know that oddly endearing way that we don't consider it crazy to compare ourselves with nations that are sometimes 10 times larger than we are? (oi! Oi! OI!)

Might be a bit of that going on.

I think we're all a little too taken with Anthony Robbins style bullsh*t about living the dream and achieving it no matter what the odds are. I love the plucky way that Australia continues to believe the level playing field myth about trade.

The WHAT'S WRONG? story and the WASTING TAX PAYERS MONEY story is a lot easier to write than researching the big picture thoroughly.

I dunno the answer.

And neither do they.

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