The international reception of Australian women film-makers

Abstract

Although women are a minority in key creative areas in Australia, they have played a major international role in relation to perceptions of Australian cinema and industry, and as creative talent within global cinema. This article outlines how Australian women have facilitated the global flow of film industry practitioners as they work with international money and talent, and exchange ideas through their films. It examines key patterns of the international reception of films by Australian women, and explores their contribution to ‘cinematic internationalism’. It argues women film-makers have been central to the reception of Australian cinema and industry internationally, and a small number of women have had extensive reach through films that communicate female perspectives.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Academic Women's Writing group for their helpful feedback on this article: Kim Baston, Hester Joyce, Meredith Rogers; Terrie Waddell and Rachel Wilson. Thanks also to Julie Stafford and Mark Poole.

Notes

^1. Data collated by the author of this article from Screen Australia, Australian government and other online sources.

^2. Figures for the percentage of workforce by producer, director and writer come from Screen Australia (unpublished analysis of 395 Australian features, shot between July 1990 and June 2009), and the author of this chapter calculated the percentage of award wins from AFI Awards lists.

^3. I am not suggesting that women have the same experience/s, or that female experience is homogenous. Female social identity is complex and influenced by multifarious life encounters and world views. I am referring to the way the character's subjectivity is constructed, and how the female subject engages with the depicted social reality in any film under discussion. This definition is informed by the work of Teresa de Lauretis, who offers experience as making meanings from the ‘semiotic interaction of “outer” world and “inner world”, the continuous engagement of self or subject in social reality’ (1984, 182). De Lauretis has proposed another social subject that is engendered as female. For further definition, see French (2007, 19–20).

^4.Japanese Story subsequently won 8 AFI Awards in 2003 and was nominated for 10. Six went to women: ‘Best Film’ (Sue Maslin, Sue Brooks and Alison Tilson), ‘Best Actress’ (Toni Collette), ‘Best Original Screenplay’ (Alison Tilson), ‘Best Editing’ (Jill Bilcock), ‘Best Original Music Score’ (Elizabeth Drake) and ‘Best Direction’ (Sue Brooks).

^5. Women have also played significant leadership roles in screen culture, film funding and policy. This is outside the scope of this article but a large number of women have headed up state and federal film funding agencies and film festivals for more than a decade.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa French

Lisa French is Deputy Dean (Media), School of Media and Communication, RMIT University. She is the co-author of the books Shining a Light: 50 Years of the Australian Film Institute (2009) and Womenvision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia (2003). She has recently completed a study on ‘Women in the Victorian, Television, Film and related Industries’ (2012), which includes a survey of 135 practitioners.