Film History & Movements Codexery

Cinema of Australia

Australian cinema began with the world's first feature film in 1906.

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Film critic David Stratton described Australian cinema's history as one of "boom and bust", with deep troughs and high peaks.[1] The Story of the Kelly Gang* (1906), produced in Australia, is the world's earliest known feature-length narrative film.[2]

Making and release

Anthropologists Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen shot some of the earliest Australian movie film, capturing Aboriginal dancers in Central Australia between 1900 and 1903.[3] The 1910s were a "boom" period, with 51 narrative films released in 1911 alone.[4] By 1912, independent producers had merged into Australasian Films and Union Theatres, which controlled distributors and cinemas.[5] F. W. Thring established Efftee Studios in Melbourne in 1930, producing the first Australian sound films in 1931.[6]

October 1896 saw the first Australian public film screenings, occurring less than a year after the Lumière brothers' initial Paris screening.[7] The Salon Lumière, located at 237 Pitt Street, Sydney, opened as Australia's first cinema in October 1896; on 27 October 1896 it screened the first short film made in Australia.[7] From 1897 to 1910, the Salvation Army ran the Limelight Department in Melbourne, which created roughly 300 films and was the era's largest film producer.[8][9] By 1923, films from the United States made up 94% of all movies shown in Australia, giving American productions market dominance.[10]

Cinesound Productions, led by Ken G. Hall, became Australia's foremost domestic studio, modeled on Hollywood's approach.[11]

What the cited sources add

The Australian Screen Online record states that the film Inauguration of the Commonwealth is possibly the first feature-length documentary made in Australia and the first to use multi-camera coverage.[12] The Ausfilm article reports that in the 2015-16 year, foreign location spending in Australia was $273 million and foreign post, digital and visual effects spending reached a record $105 million.[13] The same article says that in 1994, after Austrade spotted opportunities in the US market, the Export Film Services Association was formed, later known as Ausfilm.[13]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 1990. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "World's first feature film", National Museum of Australia; Rabaté, "1913: The Cradle of Modernism", Wiley, 2008, p. 20 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mulvaney, "Spencer, Sir Walter Baldwin (1860–1929)", National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 14 July 1929 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Pike, "Australian Film 1900–1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production", Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 1–49 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Australian screen, http://australianscreen.com.au/titles/picture-show-man/clip1/ (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Graham Shirley and Brian Adams, Australian Cinema: The First Eighty Years, Currency Press, p125. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Cinema Industry Trends Before 1900", Screen Australia; Jackson, "Australia's first cinema", Australian Screen Online, 22 November 2010 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Limelight", Australian Broadcasting Corporation (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Inauguration of the Commonwealth", Australian Screen Online, 1 January 1901 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Albert Moran & Errol Vieth, Historical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Cinema, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2005, 30. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  11. Wikipedia, "Cinema of Australia" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: UNESCO Honours Cinesound Movietone Productions – Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (Australia Section); Ken G. Hall Award goes to the late Tom Nurse – Australian Film Commission News & Events. 27 November 2003. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  12. "Inauguration of the Commonwealth", Australian Screen Online, 1 January 1901. facts only, no text reused. aso.gov.au
  13. Windsor, "The Ausfilm team on flying the flag in LA and attracting global projects to Oz", IF Magazine, March 30, 2017. facts only, no text reused. if.com.au

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Cinema of Australia (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

More in Film History & Movements

Cinema of AfricaCinema of CanadaCinema of EgyptCinema of GermanyCinema of GreeceCinema of Hong KongCinema of IndonesiaCinema of IranCinema of ItalyCinema of KoreaCinema of MexicoCinema of Nigeria

Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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