By Travis Johnson
AACTA AWARDS 2016
Earlier this year I put our film All About E in for the AACTA awards, after AACTA approached us about entering. The film went for “preselection” as it had a non-traditional release. Having said that, it may amount to a wider viewing than some traditionally releases: US Netflix, 33 cinema screenings in Australia plus digital viewing via Foxtel and Stan, and theatrical release in Germany and the Netherlands. However, all good, it was clearly non-traditional, so I had no problem with going through an extra process to establish that it had a bona fide release – or so I thought. Silly me. When it came to the competition, I received an email to say it hadn’t got through “preselection”. This is a copy of the letter I sent to each board member and the executive staff of AACTA.
“I received an email yesterday letting me know that a film I produced last year, All About E, has not been passed through to the AACTA awards competition from pre-selection. You probably haven’t heard of All About E, as it has been almost impossible to get the film into any mainstream Australian channels.
This is a time when the Screen Agencies, and the industry globally, have been lamenting the lack of films by key women creatives, films about strong women characters, and films about diverse and non-anglo communites – because those practitioners, those creatives, those stories, are marginalised at every stage.
So here we see marginalisation in action. We have a film with an excellent first time woman director, a woman editor, a woman cinematographer – oh, and even a woman producer. We have a strong woman character who is the core of the story, who is also from a Lebanese background, and happens to be a lesbian.
Could that be why?
Marginalisation is complex. It is about the participants not having powerful patrons. It is about the decision makers thinking those stories are “special interest” – code for not about me, or not about the dominant class/ gender/ sexuality. It is about not even letting those people – or stories – be considered for admission to the club.
No-one is suggesting that All About E should be nominated for an Oscar – it has plenty of flaws, as do all low budget films. However, it is certainly strong enough to sit alongside any Australian film from the last year. Although it didn’t get Australian distribution, it has distribution in the US, Canada, Germany, and Holland, and is on US Netflix and ITunes. It has sold out screenings around Australia, and shown at more than 30 international festivals – and all that with virtually no marketing budget and absolutely no backing.
I have listened to speaker after speaker talk about the lack of these films – and I cannot tell you how invisible it makes you feel when the film which has been made, and released this year, just doesn’t even get a mention. So the next time someone laments that there just aren’t the films coming through – there are. You just don’t hear about them.”
I received two very thoughtful replies from female board members, who also said that I would be receiving an official reply from AACTA but that they wanted to reply themselves. They also said that they had nothing to do with the judging, which I knew.
And that reply from AACTA? Four months later I’m still waiting, but not holding my breath. Perhaps a demonstration of just how seriously AACTA takes gender matters.
Jay Rutovitz, Producer
Yes Yes. Invisible. We made Jucy in 2010 and had a successful festival season, a US sale and a small release in Australia But When AACTA says your film is not a qualifying Australian film, the feeling is like a punch in the guts.
We were told the rules were quality control and a good film could have found a qualifying release, but using other objective evaluations (festivals, industry reviews, international sales, number of screens, number of capital cities), we surpassed other films that did qualify.
When my first feature, All My Friends are Leaving Brisbane was a nominated film in 2008, being part of the AFI (now AACTAs) screenings put the film in front of many industry practitioners who didn’t know it (or I) existed. Several of them sought me out and I still have ongoing relationships because of my involvement in 2008 AFI awards.
The fact that AACTA has not responded to the #sausageparty is an indication that it is not an effective organisation.
Hear, hear Louise Alston – invisible – so much talk, so little action. And yes of course filmmaking is hard for everybody, (are all filmmakers masochistic nuts?) but the figures do not lie, they show an overwhelming bias. Even more frustrating to know you went through the same thing in 2010. Grrr! It’s 2016 – why hasn’t it changed especially with all the earnest rhetoric? All About E was doing better than a number of other productions yet was not considered. I am proud that it is on US Netflix and elsewhere showing a more up to date version of Australia and getting to such a wide audience, despite our bizarre insular AACTAs.
If it is any help Louise, I thoroughly enjoyed your film as a white, older heterosexual male and AACTA member. With all the arguments about women in film, yours is quite simply a love story. Your film thoroughly deserved a screening and entry in competition. But perhaps it would have stood out too far. Of the twenty or more films I saw there were two or three that engaged me (ie THE DAUGHTER and LOOKING FOR GRACE) and the short film entries were superb. But no low budget Oz flick would ever stand a chance against the sixty million dollar Mel Gibson war-gore hero epic. It was always going to win and voting was a formality. The day we cap the budgets for qualifying films we will truly encourage all film-makers to achieve excellence even when they can’t afford the enormous costs of promotion that have nothing to do with the quality of the production.
Thanks David :)
Let me buy you a coffee! Find me here http://www.louisealston.net
Xx
There are lots of well-made Australian films that never get mentioned or see the light of day in the very country they were made in. Australians, it seems, are snobs when it comes to home-grown talent.
The Australian industry is so insestual that many film makers and actors go straight to the states, losing their faith and personal patriotism to Australia. I see it so much in LA…
Louise I feel your pain with Oddball and now Bad Girl ( female leads, female producer) being snubbed, and you know I loved Jucy. But I n a world where features are fucking tough to make, this selective process that excludes 98% of the films made is bad for everyone. We need a feature award program like the Oscars. Mixing TV AND WEB and whatever may make the the package easier to sell, but its all part of devaluing features and giving in to its decline. Maybe I’ll drop everything and spend my life trying to get that done?