Essay: The Australian film industry

The australian film industry began in 1960 with The Story of Kelly Gang , the first geatured film ever made. Since then, a lot of films have been produced and for that, Australian cinema received international recognition. The cinema in Australia started with the first public screenings of movies in October 1896, a year after the worldțs first screening ever made in the world, by Lumiere Brothers in Paris.
Do you know who invented the feature film? Well, when i found out i was surprised as hell. Because, appearently, yhe founders were some convicts and a few native tribes who lived on a lonely island continent that floated in the middle of the Pacific. Who would of thought that they were a colony of revolutionary artists capable to invent the feature film.
The story of Kelly Gang was the first in 1906. It was also the first to be censored: banned in Kelly’s home state of Virginia.
These grand beginnings landed the Australia of today with a small but successful industry, that often goes unnoticed in the wider world. But still, it has a history of world firsts; in technology, ideas, screenplays, political and social change.
It has given birth to a lot of the world’s film stars, directors and crews, most of them were and still are going to Hollywood. But their origins were in Australia and a lot of battlers have remained at home, to continue making movie after movie for their country.
Some note of the greats that have made the industry what it is: during different periods of history the same names persist time and again. The movies included here were selected for their high standards and historical contribution to the principle of Australian Cinema, not only providing great entertainment through the decades but documenting the history of Australia and its people.
Not only was Australia the first country to release a feature film in 1906, it also produced the first feature documentary in 1901, shot by Limelight Department of the Salvation Army and recorded the inauguration of the Commonwealth and the Federation of the Australian states.
The 1910s was a “big” period in Australian cinema. It began slowly in 1900, and in 1910, 4 movies were release, then 51 in 1911, 30 in 1912, and 17 in 1913, and in 1914 back to 4, when the beginning of World War I brought the end to film making. Even if  these numbers may seem small, Australia was one of the most prolific film-producing countries at the time. In all, between 1906 and 1928, 150 narrative feature films were made, of which almost 90 were made between 1910 and 1912.
It was a general consolidation in 1910,  in the production, distribution and exhibition of films in Australia which saw by 1912 the merger of numerous independent producers into Australasian Films and Union Theaters that established control over film distributors and cinemas and required smaller producers to deal with the cartel. Some people saw the arrangement as opening the way for American distributors in the 1920s to sign exclusive deals with Australian cinemas and exhibit only their products, thereby shutting out the local product and crippling the local film industry.
There are a lot of other explanations for the decline of  industry in the 1920s. Some historians point to falling audience numbers, a absence of interest in Australian product and narratives, and Australia’s participation in the war. At the same time, there was an official ban on bushranger films in 1912. With the suspension of local film production, Australian cinema chains sought alternative products in the United States and realised that Australian-produced films were a lot more expensive than the imported product, that were priced cheaply as production expenses had already been recouped in the home market. To change this imbalance, the federal government set a tax on imported film in 1914, but it was removed by 1918.
Whatsoever the explanation, by 1923, American films dominated the Australian market with 94% of all exhibited films coming from that country.
Sexuality in the australian film
Sydney city from Australia is the home of the biggest population of gay people in the world, and throwing the biggest gay and lesbian Mardi Grason the planet, gives the ideal setting for a culture that redetermine sexuality. Varying from the tough gay, to the sexobsessed woman,Australian films will frequently  ignore the gender roles that infuse the ussual Hollywood films.
With what is Australia more different then others when it comes to sexuality? Some movies from the 1990s could give us some suggestion. Knowing  Russell Crow in the 1994 film, The Sum of Us. He played Geoff, a normal man, beer-drinking who goes opposing international pattern that suggest that gay equates with being lustful or a feminine wuss.
Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving, two of the most individual actors in Australian cinema, are both cabaret dancers in the national blockbuster The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert; farther proof that Australian movie usually come from typical cultural assumptions in query  the audience: what means beeing a man, and what if this man dressed in a drag will dance at ABBA?
Portia de Rossi, Elle MacPherson and Kate Fischer played the mainly nude models in Sirens, that explores lesbianism, , nudity and constraint of creativity, sexual urges and such films provided a powerful presence.. Homosexuality wasn’t the only sexuality that was opened up.
The marital traditions were challenged by Toni Colette  in Muriel’s Wedding while Sara Browne’s personage, sexual discourse dominated the film Occasional Course Language: “What’s eating you?” “No one, that’s just the problem isn’t it?”.The quote which summarize the female Australian who is acting like a man by the standards of many cultures, yet  is credible  in the context of the Australian lifestyle.
The supreme performances of the 1990s are those of Claudia Karvan and Guy Pearce in Dating the Enemy. He plays a man with a woman’s knowledge  trapped in his body while she plays a woman with a man’s knowledge  trapped in her body. Still audiences weren’t confused by their transgender performances in the minor; a confident sign of how much Australian movie has helped in the redefying the gender in cinema.