PRESENTATION OF AUSTRALIAN FILM INSTITUTE
AWARDS FOR 1969
National Library, Canberra, ACT 2 DECEMBER 1969
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr John Gorton
Professor, Distinguished Guests and Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is usual, of course, to say that it is a pleasure to talk to an
audience gathered together for whatever purpose it may be. On this
occasion it is more than true because I think that what you have done in the
past, and what we can, if I may say so, do together in the present and the
future, will bring a new dimension to Australian life. We can show the
rest of the world what Australia Is, how its people live, and impress on
them the fact that there are other things than avant-garde kangaroos or
Ned Kellys in this great country of ours.
You m~ ay be a little surprised to hear me say that because I
am sure that a number of you would remember some years ago, as a
Senator when I didn't have to watch my words so closely because they
were taken to mean what in fact they meant and weren't interpreted by
others and then criticised as a result of the interpretation I pointed out
in the course of a debate that I was attracted to the kind of television film
and other films in which booted men advanced towards each other at the
crossroads of a small town in the Western, used the immortal line from the
" Secret Life of Walter Mitty" " I wouldn't do that if I wez yew, Toledo".
I also found some attraction to the kind of private eye film where somebody
went out into the night with a couple of revolvers, was attacked, hit on the
head by beer bottles, knocked into the gutter, and five minutes later was
able to get up and lick his weight in wildcats. This attracts me because
it is the sort of milieu to which I am accustomed if you understand what
I mean! Well, at the time that caused a little comment and I think for
most of the population it caused a certain amusement because they agreed
by and large with it. To a section of the population engaged in writing,
particularly political correspondents from Canberra, it gave an opportunity
to hold up their hands in horror that such a Philistine had come amongst us.
But you must remember that at this stage and in that context, those remarks
were made against a background of speech after speech after speech dealing
solely and exclusively with culture in the films.
Now I'm no Goering. Every time I hear the word. " culture",
I don't want to reach for my revolver, but I do want and did want to have
some opportunity to feel other than like a cultured pearl, if I may say so,
and occasionally to swim into the sea and have these folk things before us.
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But I think on the whole I might in the intervening years have been
justified because you will agree with me, won't you, that critical taste
on the whole has tended to catch up with me.
I understand that Westerns are now high fashion and Western
fans include the critics of " Les Cahiers du Cinema" and " Sight and
Sound", so perhaps one was a little avant-garde oneself at that particular
time. But on becoming Prime Minister, it did seem to me that the
film industry here in Australia had reached that climax, that point
where a decision had to be made, which occurs in all the best Westerns.
And so one of my earliest acts was to push forward plans for the
Australian Council of the Arts as a whole and I pay tribute to my
pre decessor for having announced its inauguration and we nominated
the Council Members in June, 1968. They met a month later and their
Film and Television Committee had its first meeting in November of
1968. The Interim Report of that Committee was in my hands by
May 1969. It was adopted without any alteration, the moneys asked for
were provided without any reduction which is even more unusual and
in this year's Budget, provision was made for 11300, 000 $ 100, 000 for
setting up an Interim Council to plan for a National Film and Television
School The personnel for that Interim Council have been announced and
the first action they are going to undertake is to all go overseas to study
things, and then come back again and tell us what we ought to do. But
at least that has been launched, and I think the travellers will be launched
in about another three weeks.
Then there was $ 100, 000 for the setting up of an experimental
film fund to which you referred mainly for short subjects, short subjects
which could be exhibited either on the television screen or as film in
theatres. And then there was an exhibition fund another $ 100, 000 for
the promotion and distribution of such experimental films.
After the election, as I told you, the Council was named.
But there are going to be interesting decisions to be made. Should the
school be part of a university the National Film and Television School
should it be part of a university so the film is seen essentially as an
art form? I don't believe it should, but that will be a matter of
recommendation and discussion and decision. I would prefer to see it in
rather more practical terms. Perhaps it could be seen, and this is
coming closer to it, I think, as a film school linked with one of the
colleges of advanced education where technologists of all kinds and
we must include in this, I think, if it doesn't upset people directors,
producers, designers of scenery, script write14, all of whom have rn're
than a merely theoretical part to play a practical part to play in the ./ 3
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development of film and television in Australia.
Or should it as another alternative, and perhaps the best
of the lot, should it be a part of some entirely new not college of
advanced education, not university some entirely new centre where
not only the National Film and Television School sets up for its purposes,
but wher e the National Institute of Dramatic Art might perhaps set up
for its purposes instead of in the University of New South Wales, where
possibly the School of Opera or Ballet might also se t up for its purposes,
and where all these art forms which have so much in common could
perhaps cross-f ertilise aach other. Well these, and perhaps other
things of which I haven't spoken, are the recommendations for which we
are waiting and which, as soon as they are received, will be considered
and on which a decision will be made.
I am told by people closely associated with the industry that
the films of the 1970' s may have very little in common with the films of
the 1950' s or 1960' s in terms of form or content. As to the truth or
otherwise of that, I don't know, but the experimental film fund, I suggest,
is particularly important because through its tactics, through uts trials,
perhaps through its errors, the new writers, directors and editors of the
Australia of the 1970' s will be discovered. And we hope soon to advertise
for applications for assistance to the Australian Council of the Arts and
the Australian Film Institute.
I said in a policy speech in 1969 that if we were returned as
the Government, we would legislate for a film and television development
corporation ( recommended to us again by our advisers), and that this
legislation would be brought down in the first Session of 1970. An initial
capital grant of one million dollars will be provided, and as that is spent,
or as part of it is spent, it will be topped up each year to bring it back to
one million dollars, and the fund will be administered by an independent
board, whose members will be announced after the bill becomes law.
I want to emphasise to you that this fund is intended for
investment in films. It is not intended as a give-away programme.
It is intended for investment. We will be indicating our optimism by
such an investment, but we mustn't be expected, and I am sure it would be
wrong if we did underwrite all the cost of a film or films in this
programme. Producers will still be expected to have a substantial
equity in a film and to show faith in their artistic judgment, and I would
hope and expect that distributors those people whom I am sure many of
us think of a the bA man in the Western films, stalking along in a black
hat and black gauntlets the distributors should also be prepared to invest
in such an enterprise and share the losses, if there are losses, and
profits if there are profits. / 4
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We believe, for we have optimism, that after a period of
time, properly-made investments in film industries will be bringing in
profits and that then there will be no need any longer for the public,
through the Government, to top up the fund each year. That is our
objective, and the measure of our success will be gauged by that.
I hope that the Government, having shown the red badge
of courage or in the case of a Liberal Government, the blue badge of
courage should in turn encourage all investors to back this industry.
We do expect profits in money terms. Above all, we expect
profits in human terms. Our industry, I think in Australia, is one of
the oldest in the world. I am told that " Soldiers of the Cross" was made
in 1899 in Australia in Murrumbeena and frankly that is all I know
about it and probably that is all most people in this room know about it,
but at least there was a film made at that time in Australia. I would like
to see it now. I am sure it has got all thcse jerky little motions they had
in the films we used to see in the past. But that initial silent movie era
was stopped in Australia by the introduction of the talking film, as so
many of the film stars of the time had their careers ruined by the
introduction of the talking film because it didn't seem quite in place for
somebody playing the part of the Queen of Rumania to have a Brooklyn
accent. So in Australia's case there was no great desire apparently in the
rest of the world to hear an Australian accent. And the film industry was
hurt further by the depression and suffered years of official neglect.
Well, the Government has given support to other arts since
the 1930' s ballet, drama, opera. Films in the 1960' s seem to us, and to
me, to be a logical extension. of what we have been doing with increased
momentum in the last couple of years.
The demand for film is very much greater on television than
it ever was when the picture theatres were at their peak. I am told that
18-year-olds today have seen over 500 feature films by watching television
which is more than we ever used to see as children or as 18-year-olds,
travelling each Saturday to see the " Perils of Pauline" in the silent movies.
So even to keep up a respectable proportion of Australian
interest, to be able to show, to lift up to the world a mirror to this
country of ours, we must produce more films and we must produce more
videotape material a a
I assure you, Sir, and this audience, of my own personal
determination, of my own personal commitment to this, and of my own
personal burning desire that it should be successful for the sake of
Australia and for the sake of the people living in it or some of the
people living in it. Because this gives another opportunity for individuals
with particular talents in this field to be able to express those talents,
express their personalities, have a real reason, an interest in living,
and this is part of what a modern society must provide to all those who
are components of it.
We have done well in the field of painting, of course; that
is perhaps better known than any of our other arts overseas. If in the
next ten years, in the exciting seventies, we can in the film world
produce the equivalent of a Drysdale or a Dobell, then we shall have
amply justified the work that all you gentlemen have done and the support
that you in the audience have given.
We need to be able to see ourselves through the world of
film ourselves through other eyes if you like but the eyes behrzd the
camera. This we need to see in our own country, but even more, I
think, we need other countries to see just how we live and how we think
and how we dispute and what we do.
I doubt if many people living in Asia or in Europe would
have any real idea of what life in the United States is like, if it were
not for films and of course they haven't got any real idea of what life
in the United States is like because they see films, but at least they have
an impression which they get through films! I would hope that it would
be our chance to give an impression, and a true ippression, to people
of the world of what our couitry and our people are like in the city, in
the country, and in the problems which beset each one of them and in
the way in which they seek to overcome them.
I think that in this way we can make a contribution to the lives
of many people in this nation. Through the exciting seventies and at the
end of them, I hope there will be established here a film industry, not
yet as great as those in other countries, but so great that its ultimate
greatness cannot be denied and cannot be prevented. And if this does
come about, then this will be one of the most delightful things for me
personally because I will feel I have had some part in it and I wi 1
feel it is e thing worth having done. I will be able to hold that to myself
even though I haven't done the work that all you others have.
And therefore, Sir, I thank you for having asked me along
tonight, and it was a real pleasure to be able to come.