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So, about this place which I call home…

Kangaroos, dingos, kookaburras, diggers, beaches, BBQs, UTEs, mates and vegemite… and movies.

There you go. That about sums it up, pretty much!

Yes, I am talking about the Downunder, the Australia or, in short, Oz.

IMHO, this magical sounding geographical namesake of the founder of PFC is, in some ways, not very unlike PFC itself.

Australia, at its heart, is a values based organization which welcomes anyone with open arms as long as they abide and live by its fair go values. It’s passionate about movies as an artistic form of expression - passionate and expression being the keywords here - and tries to showcase its passion in perspective of the amusingly warped milieu it cherishes, which we aussies call home. Which, in spite of all its shortcomings as a movie loving nation, still - manages to unearth a gem or two, produces a masterpiece or two, discovers a wizard or two, every other year or so.

Not a bad feat!

I’ve recently been made understood that movie making in Australia goes all the way back to 1900. Tait family in early 1900s produced what I was told is the world’s first full length feature film - The Story of the Kelly Gang (TSOTKG).

But I suppose the fact that Aussies were very interested in watching their own stories on the screen worked as a double edged sword.

Following the stupendous success of TSOTKG both at home and overseas (US/UK), a plethora of bushranger stories got made and made money, but then the bloody genre got banned by the government for political reasons.

This ban unfortunately gave the production companies from US and UK the much eagerly awaited opportunity to takeover the industry.

Their first strike was at the distribution circuit, which obviously opened up the market to non Australian movies; the next victim was the exhibition network, where, due to the overload of the non-Aussie fare, the Australian `perceived-by-non-aussies-to-be-navel-gazing` features started getting short-changed, and then by the end of 1920s the selling power of the local industry was all but that of a run down strip mall trying in vain to compete with the Bloomingdales or the Harrods.

So much for pioneering. Sigh!

So the industry was down and stayed down for almost half a century, until 1970s, that is.

And then Nicolas Roeg - whose impeccable CV boasts of pedigree-by-association of David Lean, Roger Corman, François Truffaut, John Schlesinger and Richard Lester - made Walkabout and, marking the advent of the Location Cinema, put Australia in the spotlight again.

Allow me digress a bit, before I proceed further.

In my opinion, the major influence for Australian movie makers is the unique ethos of downunder - its environs and its cultural heritage, or the civilizational baggage if you will.

The way this country inspires, and sometimes dissever, the individuality of its native cinema is amazing.

In a way it reminds me of this ancient pALi sonnet where the poet (apologies for my uninspiring translation, but cannot resist sharing this) talks about two people watching the full moon. One, whose belly is full, sees his woman’s breast in the moon, while the other, who’s in search of food, sees a roTi (Indian bread).

Not unlike the above story, Australia, the outback and all that, is seen as a source of beauty by some, and a cruel penalization by some.

Let’s take two Australian classics that were cross-continental super hits, Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee.

The outback, in Mad Max, is a futuristic savagelandish symbolic place where the people are of two class divisions — the hunters or the hunted. The same outback, in Paul Hogan’s view, is an apt representation of the true-blue Australia, symbolizing the rugged yet friendly nature of the Aussie blokes in general.

Similarly, when it comes to the cultural influences, on one hand we have the bushranger movies, which were inspired by the convict history, focusing on Ned Kelly and the likes - and on the other hand we also have the Aboriginese expositions such as the 10 Canoes, Rabbit-proof fence, etc. which convey the white-guilt about the treatment that got meted out to the natives and therefore can be classified as the atonement movies, if you may.

The indigenous Australia — no matter in what shape, means or form it inspired many an auteur — has always produced cinema which symbolizes the diversity, portraying the inevitable doom of Australian values, cultural, environmental, and moral.

Let’s talk about Walkabout, and more on other Australian movies, when we meet the next time.

Till then, cheers!

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