AUSSIE FILMS FOR AUSSIE AUDIENCES

 AUSSIE FILMS FOR AUSSIE AUDIENCES

First written in January 2013. Updated November 2026.

Was the original intention behind setting up our film 'industry' to provide Australian crews with ongoing work on films made by overseas production companies, or to support the production of Australian films - written, directed and crewed by Australians, telling Australian stories to Australian audiences?

The two objectives are not mutually exclusive, of course. 

Overseas productions provide employment, develop skills and make use of Australian studios, technicians and other production resources.

But thirteen years after I first wrote this piece, the question remains:

Have we become a backlot for foreign films at the expense of Australian films?

A debate about this recurring question is long overdue.

When I first wrote this in January 2013, Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby had not yet been released.

At the time, film producers and Screen Australia bureaucrats were arguing about whether Gatsby — an adaptation of one of the great American novels, financed and distributed by Warner Bros — was an appropriate recipient of tens of millions of dollars' worth of Australian taxpayer support.

I asked:

What will Australian taxpayers get for their contribution to the coffers of an American entertainment company whose primary market is not Australia?

And:

What will NSW taxpayers get for their contribution to Gatsby's budget when the amount contributed is hidden from them on the grounds of "commercial-in-confidence"?
Thirteen years later, the terminology and mechanisms may have changed, but the underlying question has not.

The Great Gatsby was released in May 2013 and was internationally successful - grossing around US$354 million worldwide. It employed Australian crews, used Australian facilities and demonstrated Australia's capacity to mount a major international production.

All good things.

But was it an Australian film?

No.

It was an American story, based on an American novel, set in America, financed primarily for an international market. Its Australian director, Australian crew and Australian production expenditure do not turn F. Scott Fitzgerald's quintessentially American story into an Australian one.

This distinction matters.

Today Australia is more successful than ever at attracting international productions. In 2024/25, a record $2.7 billion was spent on drama production in Australia. International productions filming here accounted for around $1.3 billion, including $1 billion spent by 20 international feature films.

This is excellent news for Australian technicians, studios and service providers.
But Australian productions accounted for only 40 per cent of total drama production expenditure.

So the question I asked in 2013 has become more, not less, relevant:

What exactly is the purpose of public support for Australian film?

Why is it important that we have an Australian film industry?

Would it really matter if federal and state governments stopped subsidising Australian films and concentrated instead on attracting Hollywood movies and international television series to our shores?

If what we want is employment, perhaps that would make economic sense.

But if we believe Australian film is important to Australian culture, a different set of questions need be asked and debated.

The word "industry" itself is problematic. It conjures up a product for which there are identifiable consumers and from which a profit is expected to accrue.

Australian films, however, have historically struggled to return their production investment through the Australian box office alone. If commercial profitability were the sole criterion by which public support for culture was judged, we might also speak of the Australian ballet industry, the Australian opera industry, the symphony orchestra industry and the poetry industry.

As industries, judged purely by their capacity to survive without public or philanthropic support, many cultural activities would fail the test.

Yet we support them.

Why?

Because we believe culture has a value that cannot be measured solely at the box office.
Drop the word "industry" for a moment and think simply in terms of Australian film, and the questions become both more interesting and more pertinent.

The Report of the Interim Board of the Australian Film Commission declared:

"Australia, as a nation, cannot accept, in this powerful and persuasive medium, the current flood of other nations' productions on our screens without it constituting a very serious threat to our national identity."

The report argued that Australia should encourage films of artistic, conceptual, cultural and social value even when they might not be commercially successful. Some, it suggested, might eventually be regarded by posterity as amongst the most significant films made by and for Australians.

And, importantly, it recognised that commercial success and artistic integrity are not mutually exclusive.

That was the philosophical foundation on which government support for Australian filmmaking was built.

Is it still?

Or has the objective gradually changed?
There is a perfectly reasonable economic argument for governments providing incentives to attract international productions to Australia. They employ Australian crews. They develop skills. They support studios and associated businesses. They bring substantial amounts of overseas money into the country.

We need acknowledge these benefits.
But we should not confuse film production taking place in Australia with Australian filmmaking.

They are not the same thing.

A Hollywood production shooting at Fox Studios or on the Gold Coast may employ hundreds of Australians and contribute millions of dollars to the economy. Good news!

But it does not necessarily contribute an Australian story, an Australian perspective or an Australian voice to our culture.

And that was one of the principal reasons taxpayers began supporting Australian filmmaking in the first place.

In 2013 I wrote that The Great Gatsby might be a box-office hit and might even be a masterpiece. I didn't know: the film hadn't yet been released.

We now know that it was a commercial success.

But the point I was making then remains the same and the debate remains necessary in my view.

The Great Gatsby was NOT an Australian story told for Australian audiences and reflecting aspects of our culture for present and future generations of Australians.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

There is nothing wrong with Australians working on American films.

There is nothing wrong with governments wanting international productions to spend hundreds of millions of dollars here.

The question is simply whether, somewhere along the way, economic activity has become confused with cultural policy.

If Australian taxpayers are going to support filmmaking, what are we trying to achieve?

Employment?

Foreign investment?

A world-class production-services sector?

Or Australian stories, written and directed by Australians, reflecting Australian lives and experiences back to Australian audiences?

Perhaps the answer is: all of the above.

But if so, we should say so and be transparent about how much public money is being spent pursuing each objective.

Because the question I asked thirteen years ago remains unanswered:

Are we building an Australian cinema, or are we building the world's best backlot?

James Ricketson
November 2026

GATEKEEPERS

 IF Magazine has declined to publish this Opinion Piece; declined my offer to pay to have it published as ‘Sponsored Content’

                                                             GATEKEEPERS

                                                For discussion, dialogue and debate

Would Young Einstein have received development funding if Yahoo Serious had been assessed anonymously by Screen Australia "industry experts" through an online application form?

Prior to the establishment of Screen Australia in 2008, fledgling filmmakers could meet face-to-face with experienced filmmaker/assessors. I was one of those assessors, working for the Australian Film Commission on short-term contracts for a dozen or so years.

In the early 1980s, an applicant who had never made a film submitted a chaotically written, incoherent, incorrectly formatted comedy screenplay riddled with typos. We three assessors were unimpressed. There was little in the written proposal to persuade us to take seriously his request for $15,000 to shoot three test scenes for a feature film.

\

Then Yahoo Serious walked into the room.

He paced up and down, talked up a storm and pitched Young Einstein. His manic energy, eccentricity, self-confidence and zany sense of humour won us over. Whatever the shortcomings of his written application, here was someone worth taking a risk on.

We recommended the AFC fund the test scenes.

The rest is history. Young Einstein grossed around $25 million worldwide

Would a 21st-century Yahoo Serious survive today's assessment processes? Or would s/he receive a form letter of rejection from the GATEKEEPERS?

This question has become more relevant with the arrival of AI. Today, an applicant can use ChatGPT or another AI platform to produce, in an hour, a polished synopsis or treatment that appears to tick every assessment box. The written application may tell us increasingly little about the creative capacities of the human being behind it.

Put that applicant in a room with experienced filmmakers asking intelligent questions and something else becomes possible: a genuine assessment of the person as well as the paperwork.

Both Screen Australia and Screen NSW refer to assessors as "industry experts". This brings to mind William Goldman's famous observation:

"Nobody knows anything... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one."

For decades, assessors and applicants met face-to-face. Today assessors remain anonymous and most applicants have no opportunity to pitch their projects or engage in dialogue with the people judging them.

Why?

I have asked Screen Australia and Screen NSW this question multiple times without receiving an answer.

When I asked VicScreen, CEO Caroline Pitcher responded immediately. She argued that assessor confidentiality:

"...supports fair, independent and robust decision-making by enabling candid, criteria-based feedback, reducing the risk of lobbying or external pressure, and protecting assessors in what is a small and highly connected industry."

These are arguments worth taking seriously.

But there is another side to the equation.

Does protecting assessors from applicants come at the cost of removing something essential from creative assessment — human engagement?

Can creative potential be reliably assessed without meeting the creator?

In the late 1990s, I was asked by the ABC to meet a young man who had never made a documentary but wanted, as a one-man-band, to film his road-trip travels from Cape Town to Cairo.

On paper, his proposal seemed wildly ambitious. Should the ABC take the risk?

I met him. Face-to-face he quickly convinced me he had the talent, energy and determination to pull it off. It was, in part, a gut judgement.

I recommended that the ABC and Australian Film Commission take the risk.

The resulting series, Africa — Cape Town to Cairo, broadcast on the ABC in 1998, launched the career of Michael Davie, now an internationally respected documentary filmmaker.

During my years assessing for the AFC, I encountered many filmmakers whose talent emerged not through polished applications with all the right boxes ticked, but through direct engagement. Some lacked experience but compensated with passion, intelligence, originality and an unmistakable determination to get their films made.

Instinct matters.

The Hollywood "elevator pitch" exists for a reason.

Filmmaking is not principally a literary activity. Some talented filmmakers struggle to express themselves in written applications. Some are dyslexic, shy or inexperienced. Some communicate much better through images than prose. Some are eccentric. Some may even appear slightly mad.

And some of these people make extraordinary films.

I am not suggesting that every applicant should receive a face-to-face meeting. Clearly that would be impractical. I am asking whether shortlisted applicants should have the opportunity to meet and pitch to experienced filmmaker/assessors before significant funding decisions are made.

There will always be tension between bureaucratic certainty and creative risk-taking. But have we got the balance right?

Great films rarely emerge from bureaucratic certainty. They emerge from talented, unpredictable human beings whose gifts may not be obvious on paper.

My concern is that anonymous assessment, online applications and the proliferation of professional bureaucratic decision-making may make it harder for funding bodies to recognise precisely those filmmakers who don't fit comfortably into predetermined boxes.

Cost is sometimes advanced as an argument against face-to-face assessment.

Screen Australia invests tens of millions of dollars each year in documentary and drama production. Would allocating even a tiny percentage of those funds to pitch sessions for shortlisted applicants really be prohibitively expensive?

The question is not whether the old system was perfect. It wasn't.

Nor am I arguing that gut instinct is infallible. It certainly isn't. Goldman was right: nobody knows anything.

But perhaps acknowledging that uncertainty is precisely why human judgement should remain part of the process.

There are many reasons Australian films struggle to find audiences: limited marketing budgets, short theatrical runs, streaming competition and the difficulty of attracting attention in an overcrowded entertainment landscape.

But another question is worth asking:

Are our assessment and development processes themselves contributing to the problem?

Perhaps anonymous assessment is fairer. Perhaps it is more efficient. Perhaps confidentiality protects assessors from lobbying and pressure. These are legitimate arguments, and I would like to hear them debated.

But I keep returning to the young man with the terrible screenplay who walked into a room more than forty years ago and persuaded three sceptical assessors to take a $15,000 gamble on him.

His name was Yahoo Serious.

Would he get through today's gate?

If the answer is no, perhaps we have a problem worth talking about.

James Ricketson

30 October 2026

Final letter to Tony Burke MP regarding 13 year dispute with with Screen Australia

 

The Hon. Tony Burke MP

Minister for the Arts

GPO Box 594

Canberra,  ACT 2601                                                                          25^th February 2026

 

Dear Minister

re Screen Australia

 

Given Screen Australia’s lack of a functioning complaints process for filmmakers and your own clear lack of interest in helping resolve my now 14 year long dispute with Screen Australia, I recently sought legal advice from a solicitor and barrister. The salient points they made are the following:

 

-        I do not consider any of the correspondence provide by you as being intimidatory or capable of placing any SA staff at risk. I think the term intimidation is subjective and the concept of "being capable of placing staff at risk," is extremely vague. They represent language that can be manipulated to encompass a vast number of communications and potentially censor innocent people.

 

-        I doubt that you will be able to extract an apology or an acknowledgement that your alleged behaviour was not improper. Time is your biggest enemy.

 

-        The costs implications are twofold: (1) The process will cost money, (2) It is almost inevitable that the losing party will be ordered to pay the bulk of the successful party’s costs.

 

As a self-funded filmmaker with minimal assets, it would be unwise of me to initiate legal proceedings against Screen Australia and risk bankruptcy. I can only defend myself with words and hope that anyone in the future with an interest in the truth, with facts and with evidence will have access to my blog and be in a position to decide for themselves who was, back in 2012 and 2025, telling the truth and who was lying.

 

In brief:

 

It was apparent back in 2012 that I had not intimidated, harassed or placed at risk any Screen Australia staff member. The Board was aware of this but rubber-stamped Ruth Harley’s proposal that I be banned anyway.

 

In 2025 the current Board threatened to ban me yet again, citing my repeated requests for evidence of my guilt as further harassment/intimidation on my part.

 

Just as Screen Australia has no functioning complaints mechanism, so too is it with your Ministry. Facts, truth, evidence are of no consequence. The Screen Australia Board is free to censor, intimidate and ban whomsoever it likes with impunity.

 

As you would be aware if you had read any of my correspondence over the past year I have offered many times to meet with Screen Australia Board and/or senior staff members to resolve this matter. I have made it clear many times over the past 14 years that I would willingly accept my publishment if one paragraph, one sentence or even one word could be presented to me that warrants my banning. 

 

Screen Australia has not taken me up on these multiple offers because Board members and senior staff alike know that I am not guilty as charged and would not be able to look me in the eye and tell me that XXX or YYY was evidence enough for them to ban me or, in 2025, to threaten to ban me again for having the temerity to ask questions it does not wish to answer. It is one thing to bully a filmmaker in cyberspace and quite another to do so to his or her face with no evidence at all to place on the table! 

 

The current board, as with its 2012 counterpart, does not have the moral courage to declare, ‘Yes, we made a mistake in banning Mr. Ricketson;’ does not have the integrity required of a body with such enormous power to steer our fragile industry in a fair and equitable manner.

 

One problem that besets filmmakers is that the financial funding cake that we must compete with each other to acquire a slice of, is not nearly big enough to feed us all. This is just a fact of life. Filmmakers thus fall, broadly speaking, into two categories: (1) Those who are recipients of SA largesse and (2) those who are not. 

 

The former has no desire to bite the hand that feeds it, and those who are not successful in their applications have no desire to bite the hand of the funding body that they hope will feed them next time around. In the absence of a functioning complaints mechanism and considering what happens to filmmakers such as myself who seek justice, it is not surprising that few filmmakers will write to you as I have. 

 

I am far from being alone in having complaints about Screen Australia. There are many of us, but most will not risk their future by making complaints that they fear may result in their being treated as I have been since 2012.

 

The problem here is systemic and has been since Screen Australia was set up.

 

There are several reasons why we do not make many films these days that Australian audiences want to see, but amongst them is the way in which Screen Australia has been run since its inception.  The problem is systemic.

 

I believe that senior SA staff, the Board and you, as Minister, should be open to the feedback and criticisms of other filmmakers in a manner that does not result in their being ‘banned’ (officially or unofficially) by Screen Australia.

 

We live in challenging times and the advent of AI, the ubiquity of streaming services that adversely affect cinema ticket sales, present our ‘industry’ with challenges that must be met with boldness and imagination and with the input of older generation filmmakers with decades of experience and the skills acquired along the way, and of young filmmakers who may have little or no experience but have an understanding of the media landscape that we older generation filmmakers do not. “Let a thousand flowers bloom.” Do not rely for good ideas on career bureaucrats who tend to lack the kind of boldness we need now.

 

At the risk of belabouring the point, Screen Australia’s problems are systemic. It has an ‘attitude problem’. The changes needed are radical if we are to convince Australian audiences that Australian films are exciting not just as entertainment but as a mirror we hold up to ourselves as a culture.

 

cheers

 

James Ricketson

cc Members of the Screen Australia Board

Dierdre Brennan CEO, Screen Australia

Why an Australian Film Industry? Questions for Arts Minister, Tony Burke

                                                                 James Ricketson

58 Braidwood Road

Goulburn 2580

jamesricketson@gmail.com

0488543555

The Hon. Tony Burke MP

Minister for the Arts

GPO Box 594

Canberra,  ACT 2601                                                                                  13^th February 2026

 

Dear Minister

re Screen Australia

 

I am clearly not going to receive a response to any of the letters I have written to you since 2012.   

 

So much for your commitment as Minister for the Arts to transparency and accountability – both of which are also lacking within Screen Australia. Why need senior management and the Board adhere to such principles when their Minister does not?

 

As I have mentioned before, the fate of one filmmaker at the hands of Screen Australia is of no great consequence in the grand scheme of things. However, the treatment meted out to me this past dozen years does raise questions that should be of concern to you. What else is taking place within Screen Australia that you have little knowledge of or interest in finding out about?   

 

A filmmaker critic of Screen Australia need look no further than my own experience to think twice about saying what she or he thinks; to challenge the peak funding body’s decision-making processes. To put it bluntly: Why do certain filmmakers continue to be successful one application after another regardless of their track record, whilst others cannot even speak with a member of Screen Australia staff?  

 

I am far from being alone in feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong with Screen Australia; that there is a need for an independent review of its relationship with the film and TV community and its funding modus operandi – if only because we are, let’s be frank, not making very many good films that Australian audiences want to see. 

 

Context:

 

Consider the box office results of the top 126 films released in Australia in 2025.

 

45 ‘Kangaroo’                         $3,870,000

67 ‘Bring Her Back’                  $1,748,000

112 ‘Together’                          $784,000

126 ‘The Correspondent’         $729,000

 

These figures need to be read cautiously. Whilst ‘Together’ appears at 112 and took $308,000 in Australia, a figure of $32 million worldwide is to be found online for this American Australian co-production. And another figure for Kangaroo is $5.2 million.

 

If, as Minister, you are in possession of more accurate figures than I have been able to find online, please do let me and my fellow filmmakers know what these are. Screen Australia, along with other Australian funding bodies are reluctant to release budget and box office figures that might suggest all is not well with the Australian Film Industry.

 

All up, Australian audiences paid around $6,500,000 at the box office to see Australian films in 2025, out of a box office total of roughly $1 billion.

 

This is considerably less than 0.1% of box office takings last year earned by Australian films. Again, if my maths here is faulty, please correct me. Do you know? If so, please share the figures with us. If these figures are to remain a secret please explain why this is so.

 

If the 0.1% figure I have just quoted is accurate, the question arises:  Why do we bother to have an Australian Film Industry at all?

 

Can we, should we, must we, ask this question in 2026, with a view to finding out if our industry is deserving of the Australian tax-payer dollars pumped into it each year?

 

How many such tax dollars are invested in Australian film production each year? 

 

It is not easy (virtually impossible, actually) to obtain an answer to this question from funding bodies.

 

Perhaps you can help me here? How many Australian tax-payer dollars were invested in Screen Australia funded films in 2025?  For instance, SA provided ‘major production investment’ in THE CORRESPONDENT. How much? Are Australian taxpayers entitled to know this figure? And if not, why not?

 

Is the purpose of an Australian Film Industry to provide employment for Australian crews working on foreign films produced in Australia?  Or is it to produce Australian films, based on Australian stories, told by Australian screenwriters and directors, with (predominantly) Australian actors for Australian audiences?

 

These two objectives are not mutually exclusive, of course. 

 

It is worthwhile, every now and then, to revisit the past of our ‘industry’ to focus our attention on why we have an ‘industry’ at all:

 

In 1963 the Senate Select Committee Report on the Encouragement of Australian Productions for television felt that there was: 

 

“a responsibility to protect an industry with a strong cultural element.” 

 

In the late 60’s and early 70’s the various bodies involved in providing the industry with a philosophical base stressed that: 

 

“The industry (should be) pre-eminently Australian in character, not dominated by other cultures; that government sponsorship (should) support ‘film and television projects of quality’ and produce ‘distinctively Australian’ films that would ‘provide the Australian people with a national voice and a record of their way of life.”

 

The Report of the Interim Board of the Australian Film Commission declared that:

 

“Australia, as a nation, cannot accept, in this powerful and persuasive medium, the current flood of other nations’ productions on our screens without it constituting a very serious threat to our national identity. The Commission should actively encourage the making of those films of high artistic or conceptual value which may or may not be regarded at the time as conforming to the current criteria of genre, style or taste, but which have cultural, artistic or social relevance. 

 

How many Australian films produced in the last five years, say, fulfil these noble artistic and cultural objectives?

 

Does Screen Australia consistently produce films of artistic worth that tell Australian stories for Australian audiences? 

 

No.

 

Do our funding bodies finance projects that consistently do well at the box office? 

 

No

 

Has Australia become a service industry for overseas producers, subsidised by Australian taxpayers? 

 

Yes.

 

Should we, as an ‘industry’, as funding bodies such as Screen NSW, be pondering such questions aloud?

 

I believe that we should; that we are long overdue for public dialogue and debate about such questions. One of the obstacles to such dialoguer and debate is that senior management and the Board of Screen Australia are very thin-skinned when it comes to criticism and, as my own experience makes clear, will go to great lengths to silence critics.

 

The words ‘film industry’ suggest that we are producing products that will yield for a profit for investors. We are not.

 

Will ‘Bring Them Back’ and ‘Together’ join ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’, ‘Storm Boy’, ‘The Castle’, Breaker Morant’, ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’, ‘My Brilliant Career’, Sunday Too Far Away’, ‘Kenny’ and others that DO fulfill the creative dreams articulated back in the 196s and 70s? 

 

To pretend that the bulk of truly Australian films will ever generate profits is to delude ourselves. Imagine if we referred to the ‘Australian ballet industry’, the ‘Australian Opera industry’, the ‘Sydney symphony orchestra industry’, ‘the poetry industry’ and so on. As industries they are all abject failures, so why do we bother to subsidize them? 

 

The Report of the Interim Board of the Australian Film Commission’s answer:

 

Some (films) may not become commercially successful ventures, but these may include films which posterity will regard as some of the most significant films made by and for Australians. Profit and entertainment on the one hand and artistic standards and integrity on the other, are not mutually exclusive. In the long term the establishment of a quality Australian output is more important for a profitable, soundly based industry than the production, exclusively, as what might be regarded as sure-fire box-office formula hits.

 

If we stop using the word ‘industry’, and think primarily in terms of ‘Australian film’ as a cultural artefact, two questions worthy of discussion in 2026 are:

 

-        In five, ten, twenty years will it matter whether or not Warwick Thornton’s films returned a profit to investors? 

 

-        In five, ten, twenty years will our children and our children’s children, our film culture, care that films such as ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ and ‘Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy’ returned a profit? 

 

It is wonderful, of course, that thousands of Australian film and TV technicians have regular work, but has our becoming a Hollywood backlot helped or hindered our capacity to create the films that our ‘industry’ was set up to produce?

 

When it comes to drama, be it TV or cinema, we are failing badly. I believe that one of the reasons why Australian audiences stay away from Australian films in droves is that the quality of the screenplays from which they are produced is low, far too often. In other instances, screenplays have been geared into production 2, 3 and 4 drafts before they are ready to be produced. This points to a failure of Screen Australia’s assessment processes. I believe that these need to be reviewed independently with a view to improving the quality of screenplays.

 

I, and other concerned filmmakers would appreciate an opportunity to meet with you to discuss the role that assessment processes as currently practiced by Screen Australia are contributing to or are an obstacle to the production of high-quality Australian films, Australian stories told by Australians for Australian audiences.

 

There are many other questions to be discussed within our ‘industry’, of course, exploring a range of issues that concern us all – particularly given that the advent of AI is rapidly changing the nature of the ‘workplace’ as we have come to know it, for better and for worse.

 

I believe that there needs to be industry-wide public debate focusing on the question of why we have an ‘industry’ at all and who it is serving in the new AI ager that we confronts.

 

cheers

 

James Ricketson

 

cc Dierdre Brennan CEO

Members of the Screen Australia Board