As Australia’s premier film festival came to a close in Melbourne over
the weekend, a new report by accounting giants PriceWaterHouseCoopers
has described 2004 as a monumental failure for the Australian film
industry, scraping in only $11.9 million at the box office and recording
its worst year since 1978.

The firm’s Media Outlook study put into writing what many in our
local industry have been saying for ages: local
productions are on the slide, Aussie critics are attacking our
sub-standard story making, and movie-goers were “staying away from
Australian titles in droves.”

And our media – which has always taken the chance to kick the film
industry when it’s down – has surprisingly kept its distance, with
only Melbourne’s Herald Sun
reporting on the study. “Domestic feature film production is truly in
crisis,” the paper quotes the report as saying. “Australia’s feature
film industry reached rock bottom in 2004.”

But with all his cross-media interests, Rupert’s biggest selling Aussie daily
couldn’t leave us
thinking the Aussie media scene was in financial strife, so slipped in
this line: “But elsewhere the nation’s media landscape is healthy, with
traditional media such as newspapers, radio and free television
accounting for the bulk of the $20.8 billion industry.”

2001’s Lantana, last year’s Somersault and this year’s Oyster Farmerall
received positive reviews, but failed to make an impact at the
box office, and with production levels less than half what they were 15 to 20 years ago, it’s not looking good.

Executive Director of the Australian Film Directors Association,
Richard Harris, told Crikeythat the report was no surprise. “The whole
atmosphere for Australian and feature films generally is pretty bleak
actually,” he said. “It’s definitely going to be very difficult for
Australian feature films in the future.”

Hopscotch Films partner Troy Lum, whose company released Somersault and this year’s acclaimed Peaches,
told Crikey that fighting against the Hollywood giant was almost
impossible for our industry, which he described as more of a “national
hobby.”

“We live in a world where we are incredibly culturally dominated and
it’s getting harder to get an Aussie film out there,” he said. “We need
to make our own films and need to have our own voice [but] I
don’t think we live in an environment that encourages innovative
cultural arts.”