Tonight the NFSA’s Arc cinema held their second recent screening of Into the Shadows, a passion project by local writer/director Andrew Scarano. Inspired by the closure of Canberra’s Electric Shadows cinemas, the doco explores how the Australian film industry came to be in the chronically ill state it’s in and what might break it out of the rut. Given how Electric Shadows featured in my first few years in Canberra, I was keen to catch this one on the big screen. I’m glad I caught it.

This clip was just one of the observations on the local content that’s making the producers feel good but that no-one’s going to see that got a lot of laughs at tonight’s screening:

An American will come into the room and he’ll say “I want to have sex with her; I’m going to kill him; I’m going to steal that; and then I’m going to buy that car.” That’s like the first two minutes of the movie: you know what the guy wants, and the rest of the movie you just follow him going to get what he wants. Whereas in Australian films, the guy’ll go “I don’t mind that car, I wouldn’t mind rooting her but I don’t really care if I don’t.” You know, it’s a very lackadaisical, laconic nature, which is so inherent to our culture. … What a protagonist should be, if they don’t get what they want, it’s a huge crisis, whereas In Australia if they don’t get what they want, it’s kind of all right. And that’s the problem.

Brendan Cowell, Writer/Actor

MUFF Director Richard Wolstencroft must’ve been thinking along the same lines, noting how amongst all of the Australian films released over the last couple of decades, it’s the bad boy stories (Romper Stomper, Wolf Creek, Chopper) that get attention internationally.

The wrong content is but one of the problems highlighted by Scarano. The cartel-like MO of big exhibitors and big distributors is put under the spotlight too:

So many independent cinemas are used to receiving instructions: take this under these terms, or we’ll drive you out of town, run you out of business.That’s how organised crime works.There’s a power relationship with organised crime that says with a big stick, you can only have this under these terms. If you don’t take it, I threaten you. For me, that’s a terrible way to do business. But that’s the model out there in distribution land.

John L. Simpson, Producer/Distributor

Scarano was at tonight’s screening and mentioned that the DVD is going ahead and should be available this year. I reckon it’d make a great double-feature with Not Quite Hollywood for anyone interested in the history and future of the Australian film industry.