Screen Australia Films Produced

[Tony Phan]

ThePremium Fund, also open for episodic television and feature film projects, is for higher budget long form projects of ambition and scale from successful screen content makers. The commercial viability of the project, and the path to a significant and clearly defined audience is a key focus of this fund.

The Story Development Generate Fund provides development funding support for emerging screen content makers to develop bold and distinctive lower budget drama stories for episodic television and feature films.

Specific requirements apply where a project involves First Nations content, stories, characters or community participation. Please see the First Nations content, collaboration and participation section below and our Pathways and Protocols guide for more detail.

Screen Australia supports the telling of First Nations stories by First Nations creatives and storytellers and/or meaningful collaboration with the First Nations communities to which these stories belong.

Whenever there is First Nations content and/or First Nations community participation in the project, or when there are First Nations members of the team who do not have the authority to speak for the people or place being represented in the story, you will need to follow the checklists from the Pathways & Protocols guide.

Gender equity, diversity and inclusivity are priorities for Screen Australia. We therefore expect that the diversity of the story world and characters are reflected in the creative team and IP of the project and/or that integrated and meaningful collaboration occurs from early stages of development. Also, consider whether your team has the right to tell the story and whether your telling it will be authentic.

Decisions will take into account the assessment criteria, availability of funds, diversity of the current slate of projects and teams across all platforms, as well as the perceived need for Screen Australia funds by the applicant

Funding will be in the form of a grant and subject to a non-negotiable standard contract. All screen story development funds will be paid 100% on signing. Generally, the delivery date will be six months after signing the contract.

If you have any further questions, please email us at Development or call Program Operations on 1800 507 901. Please note that we are not able to provide creative advice or suggestions to strengthen your application.

The cinema of Australia began with the 1906 production of The Story of the Kelly Gang, arguably the world's first feature film. Since then, Australian crews have produced many films, a number of which have received international recognition. Many actors and filmmakers with international reputations started their careers in Australian films, and many of these have established lucrative careers in larger film-producing centres such as the United States.

The Australian film critic David Stratton characterized the history of the country's film as one of "boom and bust": there have been deep troughs, during which few films were made for decades, and high peaks, during which a glut of films reached the market.[3][need quotation to verify]

The first public screenings of films in Australia took place in October 1896, within a year of the world's first screening in Paris by Lumire brothers. On 22 August 1896, the first films projected to a paying audience in Australia were at Harry Rickards' Melbourne Opera House (later known as the Tivoli Theatre). The film by magician Carl Hertz was screened as part of a variety show act. Australian tours with similar projection machines followed.[4]Australia's first cinema, the Salon Lumire at 237 Pitt Street, Sydney, was operating in October 1896, and showed the first Australian-produced short film on 27 October 1896.[5]

The Athenaeum Hall in Collins Street, Melbourne, operated as a dance hall from the 1880s, and from time to time would provide alternative entertainment to patrons. In October 1896 it exhibited the first movie film shown in Australia,[6] within a year of the first public screening of a film in Paris on 28 December 1895 by the French Lumire brothers. The Athenaeum would continue screenings, such as Life in Our Navy, a 60,000 foot film of life on HMS Jupiter, shown on 26 January 1901 by G. H. Snazelle, who provided additional entertainment.[7]

Some of the earliest movie film shot in Australia consisted of films of Aboriginal dancers in Central Australia, shot by anthropologists Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen between 1900 and 1903. They pioneered sound recording on wax cylinders and shot their films under very difficult conditions.[12]

The earliest feature-length narrative film in the world was the Australian-produced The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), shown at the Athenaeum. The film, written and directed by Charles Tait, included several of his family members.[13] The film was also exhibited in the United Kingdom in January 1908.[14]

Melbourne also hosted one of the world's first film studios, the Limelight Department, operated by the Salvation Army in Australia between 1897 and 1910.[15] The Limelight Department produced evangelical material for use by the Salvation Army, as well as carrying out private and government contracts. In its 19 years of operation the Limelight Department produced about 300 films of various lengths, making it the largest film-producer of its time. The major innovation of the Limelight Department came in 1899 when Herbert Booth and Joseph Perry began work on Soldiers of the Cross, described by some as the first feature-length film ever produced. Soldiers of the Cross fortified the Limelight Department as a major player in the early film-industry. The Limelight Department also produced a film recording of the Federation of Australia.[16]

The 1910s were a "boom" period in Australian cinema. Activity had begun slowly in the 1900s, and 1910 saw four narrative films released, then 51 in 1911, 30 in 1912, and 17 in 1913, and back to four in 1914, when the beginning of World War I brought a temporary pause in film-making.[17] While these numbers may seem small in the 21st century, Australia was one of the most prolific film-producing countries at the time. In all, between 1906 and 1928 Australia made 150 narrative feature films, almost 90 of them between 1910 and 1912.[18]

A general consolidation took place in the early 1910s in the production, distribution and exhibition of films in Australia. By 1912 numerous independent producers had merged into Australasian Films and Union Theaters (now known as Event Cinemas), which established control over film distributors and cinemas and required smaller producers to deal with the cartel. Some view the arrangement as opening the way for American distributors in the 1920s to sign exclusive deals with Australian cinemas to exhibit only their own products, thereby shutting out the local product and crippling the local film-industry.[19]

Various other explanations attempt to account for the decline of the industry in the 1920s. Some historians point to falling audience numbers, a lack of interest in Australian product and narratives, and Australia's participation in the war. Also, an official ban on bushranger films occurred in 1912.[20][21][22] With the suspension of local film-production, Australian cinema-chains sought alternative products in the United States and realised that Australian-produced films were much more expensive than the imported product, which were priced cheaply as production expenses had already been recouped in the home market. To redress this imbalance, the federal government of Australia imposed a tax on imported film in 1914, but this was removed by 1918.[citation needed]

Ken G. Hall became a driving force in establishing Cinesound Productions in 1931.[25][26] The company became one of Australia's first feature-film production companies and operated into the early 1940s, becoming Australia's leading domestic studio based on the Hollywood model. The company also used the Hollywood model for the promotion of its films and attempted to promote a star system. It was particularly successful with the On Our Selection (1932) series of comedies, based on the popular writings of author Steele Rudd, which featured the adventures of a fictional Australian farming family, the Rudds, and the perennial father-and-son duo, "Dad and Dave". Despite its ambitions, Cinesound produced only 17 feature-films, all but one of them directed by Ken Hall. Though financially successful, the company ceased making feature films following the 1939 outbreak of World War II.

In 1933, In the Wake of the Bounty, directed by Charles Chauvel, cast Tasmanian-born Errol Flynn in a leading role,[27] before he went on to a celebrated Hollywood career. Chauvel directed a number of successful Australian films, including 1944's World War II classic The Rats of Tobruk (which starred Peter Finch and Chips Rafferty) and 1955's Jedda, which was notable as the first Australian film shot in colour, and as the first to feature Aboriginal actors in lead roles and to enter the Cannes Film Festival.[28]

In Britain, the Cinematograph Films Act 1927 established a quota of films that had to be shown in British cinemas. One could shoot compliant films in the British Empire as well as in Great Britain; this stimulated Australian film-production. However the Cinematograph Films Act 1938 mollified the British film industry by including only films made by and shot in Great Britain in the quota - this removed Australian films from the film quota in the UK, and saw the loss of a guaranteed market for Australian films.[29]

After filming Whiplash in the country in 1960, Peter Graves said that the biggest problem was the shortage of Australian actors.[31] Australian film-production reached a low ebb with few notable productions during the 1960s.[32] The 1966 comedy They're a Weird Mob, starring Walter Chiari, Chips Rafferty and Claire Dunne, was a rare hit of the period which also documented something of the changing face of Australian society: telling the story of a newly-arrived Italian immigrant who, working as a labourer in Sydney, becomes mates with his co-workers, despite some difficulties with Australian slang and culture. The film foreshadowed the successful approaching "New Wave" of Australian cinema of the 1970s that would often showcase colloquial Australian culture.

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