A Dense Web of Relationships How Film Culture Sustains the Screen Industries

In 2016, Screen Australia released two major studies on the value of Australia’s screen sector: the first, prepared by Deloitte Access Economics, measures the economic value of the screen sector,¹ while the second, undertaken by Olsberg•SPI, appraises its cultural value.² The findings of both were collated into a report entitled Screen Currency: Valuing Our Screen Industry.³

When the Screen Currency summary document⁴ became available to the public, it was widely welcomed among screen communities because it provided hard data to bolster claims for the importance of the sector to Australia’s economy and national culture.⁵ However, when I read the cultural-value report itself, I was disappointed to see that it did not make mention of the teaching or studying of film; critical writing about film; film reviews and journalism; or forums, festivals and screenings – various activities I consider integral to building Australia’s film culture. Despite its focus on cultural value, the Olsberg report does not consider the significance of a film culture: what it might entail, how it is developed and fostered, and what contribution it makes to amplifying cultural value. It is as if the Australian screen industries, and even Australian films themselves, exist in a complete vacuum of ideas – as if they miraculously emerge from nowhere and their reception by audiences is completely unmediated.

The implications of excluding this lively discourse are far-reaching, and, to appreciate this, we don’t need to look any further than the debates within the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) over the last few years about the role of film studies, as film history has been excised from the undergraduate core curriculum, which now has a more narrowly craft-based focus; as a result, film history has been relegated to optional electives. Across the university sector, the growing influence of the ‘cultural industries’ paradigm has increasingly had a similar effect, as film and screen studies are reframed within the industry rubric. This increased predominance of the political-economy model in cultural-industries curricula is not restricted to Australia; film scholar Thomas Schatz has examined the widespread tendency to explain cultural value in economically quantifiable terms. He asks where questions of aesthetics fit in this model, and argues for the retention of the creativity and humanistic concerns developed in film studies within the screen sector’s industry-focused agenda.⁶

This article sets out to challenge the Screen Currency report as the most recent iteration of a longstanding marginalisation of film culture that has the potential to significantly reshape screen policy over the next decade. Not only do I want to reframe the question about how to measure the cultural value of Australian cinema, but I also seek to ask