RQBBIT PROOF FENCE

  RABBIT PROOF FENCE is relevant to the discussion we're having here on Facebook. It is a textbook example of an Aussie film, written and directed by Aussies based on an Aussie story for Aussie audiences that appealed also to international audiences. 

RABBIT PROOF FENCE cost between $6 and $7 million and more than justified itself at the box office, taking around $15 million worldwide. 

RABBIT PROOF FENCE collected an impressive number of Australian awards - the AFI Award for Best Film, Phillip Noyce for Best Director, Christine Olsen for Best Adapted Screenplay. Internationally it won audience awards at Edinburgh, Denver, Calgary, Aspen, Durban and Best Foreign Film at São Paulo.

RABBIT PROOF FENCE is much more than a significant Australian award-winning film that did well at the box office. More importantly, it involved Australian audiences responding emotionally to an intense and quintessentially Australian story. 

For many non-Aboriginal Australians the film provided their first direct emotional encounter with what it meant to be a child of the Stolen Generations. 

My guess, 24 years after its release, in that more Australians have seen RABBIT 

PROOF FENCE than had seen any other Australian narrative film dealing with an Aboriginal issue. 

RABBIT PROOF FENCE is a story that couldn't simply be relocated to California or England without becoming an entirely different story.

There was controversy, of course, at the time of RABBIT PROOF FENCE’S release. 

Some conservative commentators and historians challenging aspects of the film's historical representation and the circumstances surrounding Molly Craig's removal. 

This controversy is itself evidence of the film’s cultural impact. People were arguing about Australian history because of an Australian movie. 

Wonderful 🤗

RABBIT PROOF FENCE is of historical and cultural importance, will still be viewed in 50 years and be an integral part of Australian film history. It is precisely the sort of film that the founding fathers of our ‘industry’ sought to encourage; a film that “posterity will regard as some of the most significant films made by and for Australians.”

RABBIT PROOF FENCE presents a powerful challenge to a proposition that sometimes seems implicit in Australian film policy: that a film needs to become less specifically Australian to appeal to international audiences. 

RABBIT PROOF FENCE suggests the opposite – that its appeal both in Australia and overseas is that it is distinctively Australian.

For discussion, dialogue and debate