EPHUMA306 Literature and Film For Governmental Support

Answer:

The national cinemas of Australia:

The national cinema is the films related to a specific country. When the national cinemas of Australia are mentioned then it means only the films related to the country. National cinema also has an important role in the globalization (McWilliam, 2016). The films are the reflection of the existing cultures and output of a country. A film is considered as a national film if it includes some basic factors in it. The factors are the financing, the language of the film, the nationality of the characters, the dressing styles of the characters and the cultural and entertaining part of the films reflecting the nation’s choices. The experts define national cinema using three factors such as the market, governmental support and the cultural transfers of the nation. The Australian cinema is a difficult concept; it is a term that reflects the films produced in Australia by the production companies of the country. The financing of those films is the most determining factor in the concept of the national cinemas.

While only talking about the Australian national cinema the definition also covers some of the cultural and social implications and marking of the loyalty to the nation by an object whether it be a beer bottle or a barbeque. The adaption of those objects in the film makes them different from other films.

Introduction:

The film industry is seen to be under immense pressure by the government for including all the attitudes for the representation of the margined groups (Griffiths, 2013). The including of the characters is not the only work, but the positioning of those characters within the script is a tough job. The modern films of Australia refer to the national and global audiences with the themes or characters that were previously left behind. Those themes also include women and multiculturalism. One of the themes mostly discussed over the present years is the environment. There are more than seven films produced related to environment in the years of 2010 to 2015.   There are three films, which in a broad way describes the environment of Australia in films. The chosen films are The Lorax (2012), San Andreas (2015) and Sharknado (2013). Each of these fictional films deals with environment as well as few issues of environment like the pollution, the natural calamities like the earthquake, severe weather changes and the sharks.

The role of the institutions:

The film industry of Australia is small in comparison with that of Hollywood. The film industry of Australia records a production of 30-40 films per annum. According to a record of 2012, the industry spends roundabout $250 million annually for the production of films (Verhoeven, Davidson  & Coate, 2015).  The funding of the films is largely provided by the state and commonwealth government. The government offers assistance through funds as an attempt to attract the producers (Rollwagen, 2014). The government provides offsets of three taxes also known as the screen production incentives. The three offsets are the producer, location and the post-production of digital and the visual effects. The 90% of the total budget is under the consideration of the offset of the producer. The commonwealth governments nearly assist an amount of several hundred million dollars every year. The state government funds the screenplays and the international events. The state government provides the funding as incentives to attract other films and producers to their state. The incentives provided to the film industry is on focus now because the government has aimed to manage the deficit of the state’s budget and it is finalized that the state will be providing funds only to films that are commercially successful. The film critic thinks that the government is diverting the money from the nation’s films to the foreign films (Beeton, 2016).

Representation:

It is already mentioned earlier that the Australian national films focuses on some themes whether it be a beer or barbeques. Apart from all this, the common thing that makes this period unique is the films having the same foregrounds of environment and its issues. It is not only the feature of the films but also the strategy of showing real and to some extent real incidents in films. The film industry is not at all afraid of showing the part in their films and this change in the thought can be marked as a bold move. The main theme of the films are so nicely portrayed that the audience relates to those events naturally without any problem. The filmmakers are making themselves and their films more accessible to the viewers. The representation of the Australian culture and social issues are the main theme of the national cinemas of Australia. The main concept of ‘Australianness’ is an important factor represented in the national films to promote the positivity (Ryan, 2015). By representing the environment, weather changes and the natural calamity in films, the representation factor that is a necessary element for the films are justified.  The representations in films share almost the same significance. The representation depends, either on the nature of the integration or on the emphasis of the nature of integration and on the funding that plays a vital role in bringing natural ideology in the films. The Australian films have become popular due to the revelation of the national details in the films. The reflection of reality in the films of the state and everything the people does, their values, cultures, use of languages each has its own mode of creation that are different from each other yet related together and needs to be understood separately. The Australianness in the films is the forms and practises of localised and homogenous aspects adapted in the films. The Australianness also consists of the subject matter, the location, the nationalities, the source and the funding factors of the films (Svoboda, 2016). The films chosen for the discussion have the same background of the environmental issues and weather change. The film San Andreas narrates the story of few characters stuck in the natural calamity, an earthquake and their heroism in that disastrous situation. The audience were able to relate to those characters and destruction because the film showed the huge number of people who died in that disaster and portrayed the destruction as a real one (Randell, 2016). Another movie Sharknado films the waterspout of the ocean due to which the sharks lift out. The film frames a cyclone that hits the city of Los Angeles and causes the man-eaters sharks to scoop up and attacks the people of the city who were homeless because of the flood (Reynaud, 2015). The film portrays another natural calamity and the problems aroused due to that. Although the movie is to some extent comedy but still the theme of the movie was environment. The film The Lorax is a story of a boy searching for the ‘real tree’ in order to impress someone. As the journey begins and continues the story reveals lots of information about the trees and about the guardian of the forest ‘The Lorax’ and discloses the reason of deforestation and increase of the masses (Nugroho, 2016). The story revolves around the pollution factor that is caused by the cutting of trees. The subject matter of the film is the same as two other films mentioned earlier.

Audiences:

The time chosen for the discussion is the period of the emergence of technologies. This emergence of technologies to some extent did affect the film industry by increasing the accessibility of the thesis of the films. The rise of technology did not only alter the content of films but also adapted new ideologies and influential factors that the audience will consume (Athique, 2014). For an example, there were fewer amounts of films on environment before 2010 as the audiences were ready to deal with these types of films. It is not that earlier there were no movies produced of the same zone but the difference is that these years had more number of the specific type of films. The audiences pleasingly appreciated all the three films mentioned in the discussion. The difference in the form and style displayed the Australian tendencies by making the films accessible globally. Posters were used to promote the release of the film and press release, music launch of the movies initiated the promotion of the films (Unsworth, 2015). The films asserted two kinds of audiences, one is the international audience and the second one is the national audiences. It can be said that the national films of Australia on the years 2010-2015 focused on the environmental issues.

Conclusion:

In between the years of 2010 to 2015, the film industry of Australia has seen to be emerging more due to the fast growth of technologies. Australia has broadcasted more films regarding the environmental issues in the span of the 5 years than before. This was an outcome of the pressure the government and institutions had on the film industry. The Australian film industry is a cycle form and the three films that are discussed above have contributed their part into the cycle and validated their reason of being an Australian cinema. The institutions and government have a huge role to play on the film industry of Australia. The government provides the main funding of the Australian national cinema. The chosen films have the same theme in them and that is the environment. The film industry of Australia follows few particular notions in every film. The common element is the use of a beer bottle or the barbeque or any such kind of products. The audience choice is also kept in mind and the increase of the release of this kind of films justifies the role of audiences very clearly.

References:

Athique, A. (2014). Transnational audiences: geocultural approaches. Continuum, 28(1), 4-17.

Beeton, S. (2016). Film-induced tourism (Vol. 76). Channel View Publications.

Griffiths, A. (2013). Wondrous difference: Cinema, anthropology, and turn-of-the-century visual culture. Columbia University Press.

McWilliam, K. (2016). Digital storytelling as ‘national cinema’?. Continuum, 30(6), 706-713.

Nugroho, S. S. (2016). Translation Quality Analysis on Sentences Accommodating Directive Speech Acts in the Children Movie Entitled The Lorax. Jurnal Bahasa Sastra dan Studi Amerika, 21(2), 1-7.

Randell, K. (2016). " It Was Like a Movie," Take 2: Age of Ultron and a 9/11 Aesthetic. Cinema Journal, 56(1), 137-141.

Reynaud, D. (2015). Film/Cinema (Australia).

 Rollwagen, J. R. (Ed.). (2014). Anthropological Filmmaking: anthropological perspectives on the production of film and video for general public audiences. Routledge.

Ryan, M. D. (2015). From Aussiewood Movies to Guerrilla Filmmaking: Independent Filmmaking and Contemporary Australian Cinema. In Independent Filmmaking Around the Globe (pp. 71-89). University of Toronto Press.

Svoboda, M. (2016). Cli?fi on the screen (s): patterns in the representations of climate change in fictional films. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 7(1), 43-64.

Unsworth, L. (2015). Persuasive narratives: Evaluative images in picture books and animated movies. Visual Communication, 14(1), 73-96.

Verhoeven, D., Davidson, A., & Coate, B. (2015). Australian films at large: expanding the evidence about Australian cinema performance. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 9(1), 7-20.