An extract from Shining a Light: 50 Years of the Australian Film  Institute, by Lisa French and Mark Poole

Introduction: 50 Years ‘On the Smell of an Oily Rag’ (pp.IX-XI)

In December 1958, six men sat down in a room at the CSIRO headquarters in East Melbourne to establish the first national screen culture organisation in Australia. Mindful of similar organisations in Britain and Europe, they gave it the lofty title Australian Film Institute.

They based their constitution on that of the British Film Institute and although they had no funding of any kind (and were not to receive any until 1970), they began the AFI with funds from the film society movement. Thus, on the smell of an oily rag, the AFI was born because film buffs (the audience) wanted it.

Still from

The Brothers

Fifty years later film buffs continue to form the backbone of the organisation. The AFI has a membership of many thousands across the country, a thriving annual awards to film and television productions that are broadcast nationally, screenings of the feature films, documentaries and short films that are part of the Awards that travel from state to state, a research and information library housed at RMIT University and a fortnightly newsletter on industry news.

Over the fifty years the AFI’s journey has twisted and turned to accommodate the various shifts and starts in federal and state screen policies, different levels of funding availability and booms and plateaus in the level of the screen industries. It’s been quite a journey; more than once the AFI has been on the brink of closure, but it has managed to survive like a cactus in the desert, withstanding drought and waiting for the rains to fall to begin another upward cycle.

About This Book

This book maps the AFI’s journey from its beginning in 1958, within a vastly different social, cultural and industrial landscape. The AFI has occupied a controversial place in the opinions of many filmmakers over that time, with a number of notable moments in history such as the deeply eccentric behaviour of staff holding a fully-fledged strike in 1983; the stoush between Richard Brennan, Michael Thornhill and Erwin Rado and Colin Bennett over the way the AFI Awards were judged in 1976; the cessation of the Melbourne Filmmakers’ Co-op and the subsequent take-up of those films by the AFI in 1977; the establishment and management of the Experimental Film and Television Fund; the merging of the AFI with the National Film Theatre in the early seventies; the support by Steven Spielberg who put up the money for one of the Awards; and the drastic funding cutbacks by the AFC which caused the organisation to radically alter its shape as it entered the new millennium.

This history outlines these shifts and turns of the AFI, to make sense of them by describing the parallel shifts and turns of the Australian screen industries at the same periods and analyses the successes and shortcomings of the organisation over its fifty years. The AFI’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed along with the circumstances of the times and according to the prevailing winds of film policy, particularly at the federal level. As is chronicled in the following pages, the history of the AFI is very much a reflection of, and reflected by, the fortunes of the wider screen industry within which it is situated. Thus the history of the AFI represents the industry’s triumphs and failures, its occasional bitter moments mixed in with the pride of national and international recognition and achievements.

 

Gillian Armstrong
during the filming of
My Brilliant Career

The AFI began its existence prior to the renaissance of the industry in the 1970s. This was an era when Australia was making few feature films, mainly producing documentaries and commercial films, and as we will see, the AFI was instrumental in assisting this resurgence or 'revival'. That is one reason why the original founders of the organisation were focused on films from overseas rather than local output that was minimal until the revival of the Australian film industry in the 1970s.

The industry is well known for failing to learn from its history, or even to document it, and so the authors have investigated as many sources of information as has been possible within the available time and resources. As well, we have interviewed as many of the key players in the AFI’s history as we have been able.

The book commences with an in-depth essay on screen culture. We have begun here because ‘screen culture’ (or the earlier ‘film culture’) is arguably the AFI’s raison d’être. We have devoted a chapter to considering what is meant by this amorphous term and why screen culture (and the AFI) is so vital in supporting the production sector, as we firmly believe it is.

The second part of the book contains an overview of the history of the AFI, divided into three parts. The first (chapter 2) describes the Institute’s birth, where a small group of dedicated film-goers created a national organisation to facilitate the importation and screening of significant films from overseas, up until the rebirth of the film industry. Chapter 3 covers the 1970s, which was an important time of growth for the AFI in reflection of the wider industry. Chapter 4 covers the AFI’s progression during the eighties and then chapter 6, the 1990s and 2000s, a time of maturation of the production industry, and arguably a decline of the screen culture sector.

Half a century is a considerable time span over which to operate and as we discovered, a ‘who’s who’ of the AFI turned out to be a ‘who’s who’ of the industry. That length of time, combined with the ways in which the organisation has functioned differently over that time have created a variety of ways the AFI is viewed, so we felt it important that the book conclude with an overview of stakeholders, and with a consideration of the AFI Awards as the central preoccupation of the organisation today – its triumphs, disasters and underlying issues of contention.

 

Still from

The Home Song Stories

In what follows in this book we offer an overview of the AFI over the last fifty years. It is by no means the definitive or conclusive history of the AFI, as many differing recollections have been unearthed and it is at times a subjective view – as would be expected in the telling of a mostly undocumented story that has taken place over so much time. As is the nature of film scholarship, we hope others will build on this work in the future – inspired to continue unravelling and exploring the story of screen culture in Australia.

It is perhaps an apposite time for this history to surface, at a time when Australia’s screen industries are engaged in considerable self-reflection and undergoing a federal restructure. It is apparent that there is a pressing need for the screen culture sector, of which the AFI has played a leading part, to assist in growing audiences for local screen product. As these pages pay testimony, the AFI has played a major role in Australia’s screen culture in the past, and there remains a continuing role for it to support and nurture local audiences, to promote and recognise the work of its practitioners and filmmakers, and to pass on the accumulated knowledge and experience acquired over the past fifty years to future generations of audiences and filmmakers.

Lisa French
Mark Poole

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