Beyond exploitation: preface to issue 3

As editor in chief of Studies in Australasian Cinema, I’m delighted that we are closing out 2021 with a special issue devoted to ‘Independent and Low Budget Filmmaking in Australia’.

In a country where the existence and development of specifically Australian stories cannot be taken for granted, culture, nation and industry work in an explicitly interchangeable way. Tom O’Regan (1996) has famously argued that Australian cinema is a ‘messy hybrid’ or a ‘quasi-object’ that both services and reflects a medium size English-language population and market. So, the definition of what makes a film or TV program Australian is contextual and the borders of such definitions are frequently elastic. For the independent and/or low budget, the exploitation and celebration of Australianness are central to much related scholarship that attends to the economic, politicised and artistic aspects of screen productions; borne simultaneously of an absence of funds and a brash self-reflective cultural urgency.

The ‘independent’ and ‘low budget’, have been seen to shape classic national coming of age stories, tales of Australian colonial history, and most noticeably the resurgent nationalism grossly foregrounded in second wave Australian cinema in 1970s and 80s. Low budget and independent screen texts have historically exemplified and played on the perceived extremes Australian characteristics – broadly referred to as Ozploitation (see Martin 2010).

Our guest editors, Noel Maloney and Glenda Hambly have expertly drawn together approaches to Australian film that build on, and move away from, the familiar studies of genre cinema (or colloquially Ozploitation) often relied on to make sense of the cheap, crazy locally made cinema of the 70s and 80s (the naughty, rough and rude tradition that produced the Mad Max and Wolf Creek films). The discursive attention in this collection to contexts of history and contemporary production extend the story of the independent and the low budget as integral to the developing, contemporary, and changing Australian nation – culturally and technologically.

This issue charts new conversations about the independent and low budget in Australian cinema, in various relationships to national industries, cultural experiences and as images and ideas about Australianness.

At the time of writing, New South Wales is about to emerge from 106 days of COVID related lockdown, and Victoria’s emergence from its sixth lockdown looks set to follow in the coming months. Beginning new discussions and exploring ideas that are central to the cinema seems only fitting as the larger populations and cities begin to ‘open up’. My heartfelt thanks and appreciation to our guest editors and authors who have worked hard to produce this collection in extremely trying times for those who work in screen scholarship in Australia.

As always, enjoy this special edition of Studies in Australasian Cinema.