It must have seemed like a good idea at the time …
When Film Victoria boss Sandra Sdraulig left the funding agency after nearly a decade in the job, Film Victoria’s board decided to throw her a farewell party. Some very nice printed invitations were sent out to 280 guests, and a venue for the swanky cocktail party was duly booked. Melbourne caterers Damn Fine Food provided the canapes and drinks, and a special $10,000 DVD tribute was shot and produced for the occasion. There were even some nice-smelling toiletries from hipster favourites Aesop.
All up, Film Victoria dropped a cool $45,000 on the event.
Unfortunately, word of the soiree reached Labor frontbencher Martin Pakula, who promptly FOI’d the details. The results appeared in the Herald Sun on May 31, complete with an itemised bill. Cue outrage.
Film Victoria reports to Victoria’s Minister for Innovation and Business, Louise Asher, who was apparently less than impressed. Perhaps that’s because she was left off the invitation list — unlike many Labor politicians and former Brumby government figures.
A review of Film Victoria’s events policies was announced, and three board positions have since been advertised.
The Herald Sun made the usual noise about taxpayers’ money being wasted, but many in the industry agreed. After all, as “aaron” commented on film site Encore: “That’s $45,000 they didn’t spend on film development.”
The controversy was only inflamed by Film Victoria’s only public comment on the issue: a spin-heavy “open letter to our Victorian practitioners” from acting CEO Jenni Tosi, in which the agency refused to mention the words “party” or “Sdraulig” at all. Instead, Tosi obliquely referred only to the fact that “this has been an interesting week for Film Victoria” before grudgingly apologising — not for holding the event, mind you, but rather for the controversy it caused.
“We acknowledge that the news has caused some concern and comment in the community and in the industry,” Tosi wrote. “For this we want to say sorry.”
What follows is a rather extraordinary hymn to the value of Film Victoria, complete with laughable PR guff such as “now it’s time to focus on the future” and “we’ve not lost sight of the big picture”. There’s even a “going forward”, perhaps in ironic tribute to the prime minister.
So what, you’re probably asking? There’s nothing particularly new about bureaucrats living high on the public purse.
But Film Victoria’s party is worth discussing, if only because the funding available to ordinary filmmakers is so small and difficult to access. It also tells us something about the different cultures at the top of Australia’s arts funding agencies, compared to the struggles down at the grassroots.
The truth is that in many parts of the arts, top public servants in funding agencies have almost nothing in common with the penurious artists they represent, effectively occupying a kind of salaried aristocracy in which they enjoy the kind of wages and conditions struggling freelancers can only dream about.
Sdraulig was getting paid upwards of $220,000 a year when she left, according to Film Victoria’s most recent annual report. In contrast, the most recent Australia Council report into artists’ incomes released by Macquarie University Professor David Throsby tells us that more than half of Australia’s artists earn less than $10,000 a year from their practice.
But the Sandra Sdrauligs of this world don’t often mix with the lumpenproletariat of the creative classes. Instead, their privileged position gives them access to wealth and power through the kind of glamor that the screen industry can bestow. And, because of the unique position of power they occupy, few will publicly speak out.
One way of looking at events such as the Sdraulig knees-up is to compare them to parts of the industry that get by on the smell of an oily rag. Like Open Channel, the state’s screen resource centre, which is currently locked in negotiations with Film Victoria and the state government over its new funding agreement.
Open Channel lends gear and provides essential entry-level production support to aspiring and mid-career filmmakers. Yet the organisation is at risk of losing a significant amount of federal funding because Film Victoria and its government masters are so far refusing to provide matching support. Open Channel’s chairwoman Leslie Wood told Crikey the $45,000 dropped on Sdraulig’s farewell would go a long way towards making up the shortfall.
“That amount of money would make a significant difference to the services Open Chanel could offer,” Wood said.
A spokeswoman for Asher confirmed a review of Film Victoria is under way. She refused to comment on Crikey‘s questions about whether Film Victoria’s board, and in particular its chair John Howie, still enjoy her support.
Film funding in Australia is to all intents and purposes a monopsony. In each state there is essentially only one source of finance: the state film funding agencies, generally in partnership with the Commonwealth’s Screen Australia. As a result, filmmakers and producers are often loath to complain or to criticise.
I’ve spent most of the last week trying to find someone in the Victorian industry willing to comment on the party. But, tellingly, no one was prepared to go on the record criticising the event. Nor would Film Victoria or its board comment further, referring me back to Tosi’s letter and giving Crikey the strong impression it believes the agency has done nothing wrong.
Just to put some perspective on Ben Eltham’s knee-jerk rant.
For what it’s worth I’d just like to offer some perspective as an independent practitioner with regard to all the shenanigans around Sandra Sdraulig’s leaving party. I think something of vital importance has been missed in all the ranting and vitriol and I think it’s apt that I voice it as a genuine practitioner in the industry.
Something that’s been neglected in all this is the importance of events in the film industry, or indeed in any creative industry.
Regardless of the rationale this kind of event is often fundamental in generating and consolidating projects and exposing practitioners to each other for future collaboration. These events are never simply what they are. They are always networking opportunities, and in the creative industries this kind of networking cannot be underestimated. I’d go as far as to say that these events are just as important as direct development and production funding, and that’s certainly the case in my own experience, as noted below.
Everybody in that room was a genuine practitioner in the industry, not simply people who wish they were, as I suspect the majority of the ranters and bloggers are. There were many major players, but also a large number of emerging practitioners and people who have been noted as having definite talent and potential. The net was quite wide. They were not simply chosen from an ‘elite’ to ‘wallow at the trough’ – this was also an event designed to generate and advance projects and collaborations.
I know for a fact that a number of discussions took place at that event that may make a significant difference to moving projects forward – projects that will be of great benefit to the industry as a whole.
The fear here is that a review driven by the kind of outrage whipped up by this publication, on the back of two journalists not aware of the practical facts of how the industry works will be more damaging to the industry than anything else. Is there an investigation into NGV events? And do those events allow financiers, distributors, and the creators of content to mingle and discuss potential projects? What the Film Victoria events do regardless is create an active forum for these discussions to take place. This is how movies get made. And the bald fact of the matter is that Film Victoria has been directly responsible through its practices for a significant rise in production, investment, job creation and in creating a robust film and television sector in our state that has been envied nationwide.
This is as much about its events and initiatives as its production and development grants.
Yes, I agree that the figure presented was excessive. But the important thing to remember is that this was an aberration, not the norm, and storming angrily into a review or creating a moratorium on important upcoming initiatives (this latter tactic is incredibly self-defeating as a great deal of time and money has already been spent on making them happen) is not going to do anybody any good, especially practitioners and taxpayers.
The fact is that even at the acknowledged excessive level of Ms Sdraulig’s event, it actually represents around 150 dollars per practitioner to attend something that could make the difference between a project being made or not.
Let’s say that figure was cut by half, for a major networking event. That’s 75 dollars per head. Would anybody really begrudge that as a per capita investment in talent? Many of the individuals ranting in the blogosphere are demanding sums far in excess of that.
Every one of the people present in that room entered the industry in the same way. Not through privilege and bribery, not because they are part of some elite, but through hard work. We all started out as outsiders with nothing, no reputation, and no work to hang it on, and worked our way in with exactly the same amount of help that’s available to everybody now. I came into the industry with no previous reputation, knowing nobody in it. I have never received Film Victoria funding for a project, but it is as a direct result of events like these that I am now regarded as a writer and editor of significant talent in the industry.
I’ll reiterate that again: if it were not for events like this one I would not be in the position I am in now, making a living in and a contribution to this industry.
I’d say over the years I’ve probably been the beneficiary of perhaps $4-5,000 from Film Victoria to attend events and initiatives, the result of which is my present career and the greater contribution I am making to other practitioners in the industry through my work. That $ 4-5000 has resulted in an investment figure for the state many times larger. I have written and been vital in the development of some of the most celebrated recent film releases – films that have put Australia in the world spotlight. And this is as a direct result of Film Victoria’s considered and important approach in how it gives opportunities to and develops the skills of practitioners.
Yes, the sum can be seen as excessive presented in one light – the light of the Herald Sun (whose journalists it must be said have a track record for muck-raking in the furtherance of their own careers): a $45,000 ‘self-indulgent blow-out’. But presented from another perspective it was a vital and rare networking opportunity in which practitioners from all levels could meet and discuss projects in an informal atmosphere at a cost for each practitioner of 150 dollars.
I’m not approaching this from an agenda, it’s simply the way I see it, as an independent practitioner in the industry, and as a taxpayer, who would not have a career, and would not now be generating income and revenue for the State were it not for events like these. Simple as that.
I believe that before journalists (and consequently ministers whipped up by woolly journalistic rhetoric) decide to burn through the agency with a blowtorch they may want to consider exactly what it is they are reacting to – perhaps the populist jingoism of a couple of journalists on the make and a large number of vitriolic bloggers who as yet have not found their way into the industry and are embittered about it.
Unlike the two journalists responsible for this ‘coup’, and Ben Eltham’s blogger ‘Aaron’ I know how this industry works; its mechanics and its benefits. It would be a real shame to dig a hole in a film agency that has the reputation nationally as one of the most forward-looking, competent and practitioner-devoted organisations in Australia, and one of the reasons for that, as all working practitioners will attest, stems from the importance and generosity of its events.
So i guess my invitation, and those of all my (above entry level) film making colleagues, simply got lost in the mail??
“Yes, the sum can be seen as excessive presented in one light …. a $45,000 ‘self-indulgent blow-out’. But presented from another perspective it was a vital and rare networking opportunity in which practitioners from all levels could meet and discuss projects in an informal atmosphere at a cost for each practitioner of 150 dollars.”
Ea53b6ef8cefcca248bb3276c2ccfae9,
Perhaps such networking opportunities would be less rare, and less scrutinised, if, say, 45 such events were held over a year, with $1000 of munchies laid on for the participants.
I am not in the industry though, so I may be missing your point.
EA53B6EF8CEFCCA248BB3276C2CCFAE9
Can I perhaps suggest that not “all working practitioners” will agree with you that the importance and generosity of networking events is the core business of Film Victoria.
Some might even hold the view that supporting film production is the core business of Film Victoria. Just a thought.
Sheesh! you must really feel guilty for being caught with your nose in the trough. That was an incredibly elaborate piece of waffle to justify your place at this “networking event”. I too am a working practitioner but I didn’t get invited. But I have been to many Film Vic parties and back in the day, they seemed to have one every week. They WERE good networking opportunities, schmoozefests if you will, and yes that is an important part of the industry, but not that important. Now parties to launch a film, award a filmmaker, announce a new initiative or god forbid, hand out some money – that is one thing, but a farewell party? That ain’t building anything. $45k would fund 9 writers at $5k each for 4mths of writing. Keep your parties, the artists can find the bar without them and make their own creative partnerships, and Sandra Sdraulig can buy her own soaps.