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Abstract
This paper discusses the role of film schools and government funding initiatives on the gender imbalance between male and female directors in the Australian film industry in the years 1970–2015. It traces the career trajectories of some of the first women graduates of the Australian Film Television and Radio School, such as Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion and Jocelyn Moorhouse, who negotiated the pathways of government film financing to the commercial film industry. The exploration notes that a change in film school curricula, the rise of new film programmes within public universities, and reduced government funding impacted on the profile of female filmmakers in Australia during the 1990s to early 2000s. However, a bias towards male directors on bigger budget films and the perennial challenge of balancing a career and motherhood continue to prevail in the Australian film industry. The researcher looks at possible avenues of redress, calling on the education sector, the film industry and film bodies to provide support for women directors traversing the complex social capital required to succeed in the commercial film industry.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Dr Pieter Aquilia is a Conjoint Associate Professor at University of Newcastle, Australia. She is a former Associate Dean and Associate Arts Professor for NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and has held academic positions at UNSW Asia, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Macquarie University, Sydney, and Edith Cowan University, Perth. She is a scriptwriter, script editor and director of television drama who graduated from the AFTRS in 1988. Her research areas include the Media in Asia, International Television Drama, Screen Studies and the Globalization of Screen Education.
Notes
1. Female directors across the top 100 US box office films have fallen from 9% in 1998; to 7% in 2010; to 5% in 2011; and to 4.4% in 2012.
2. US figures for male-to-female graduates from film schools are 50:50 (Zeitchik Citation2013). AFTRS reported a 60:40 ration (Barber Citation2013), but it fluctuates. In 2002, only 33% of applicants to the directing course were women (Chapman Citation2002), while in 2004, 3 out of 4 directing students were women (Bancks Citation2004).
3. The participation rate for women producers in Australia is 34% (Barber Citation2013) and women screenwriters make up 24% of the Australian film industry (Barber Citation2013).
4. From its inception 1973 to 1981, the school was known as the Australian Film and Television School.
5. Swinburne Film and Television School is at Swinburne Institute of Technology in Melbourne Victoria. It was admitted as a full member to the international peak body for film schools – International Association of Film and Television Schools (Centre International de Liaison des Ecoles de Cinema et de Television).
6. An exception to this general trend was Rachel Perkins whose feature films, Radiance (1998) and One Night on the Moon (2001), were funded by the Indigenous Branch of the AFC.
7. The Creative Australia initiative announced by the Labor government in 2012 promised additional film funding. However, the new Liberal government in 2014 overturned this policy.