Cinema Papers no. 11 January 1977 (2025)

OCR

~- THE KIWI FILM COMPANY,
‘ 83 MILLER STREET, N[...]

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CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT BRANCH
AUSTRALIAN FILM COMMISSION

« 5 ' .. ~ .. rs“ ,
' f.:' . ‘A v- g
at . ;:..§ 3.‘
A see from Journey Amo Women. a feature film made with ' istance from the
Advan Production Fund. irected by Tom Cowan, the film is for release early

in I977.

Applications for the next assessment for the

ADVANCED PRODUCTION FUND
SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT FUND[...]e to apply to this fund. Pro-
U“ all I 9 Cllpl 9V9 Opmen U” jects should be innovative and should have the
are available from: potential to further the applicants development as a
The Challma” Tl'il2Ti?§i""enlEl§yL”d””in'S g°o"v"éln‘%e%'l/Slfllilfilii
All §.2‘;‘.’[...]omising writers and directors
Amication forms for theThe fund favours
PO BOX 165 projects which are innovative in form, content or

Carlton South VIC 3053

FOR INFORMATION: Telephone a Project Officer at the Creative Development
Branch of the Australian Film Commission: Sydney 922 6855. information
sheets about the fund are available from the Australian Film Commission.

technique and[...]

A great family film about a boy’s
b[...]IAN FILM COMMISSION

fllll SI nun!

in te
MOVIE BOOK SHOP
specialists in film books and magazines.

First Floor, Cr[...]

Artransa’s Stage I was designed and built in 1968 _expressly
for the purpose of shooting features and series.

lt’s[...]hold-over arrangements, to help bring productions in,

right on budget.

If you're thinking features, talk to Garry Blackledge at
Artransa on 850155 in Sydney. He’ll tell you all you want
to know about the best feature Stage in Australia.

PPA5075

Possibly the latest electronic
Duolight cameras from the Pathe
cockerell look like ugly ducklings,
but look at their capabilities:

The electronic double super 8 version
takes one hundr[...]m which after
processing becomes two hundred feet in
the super 8 format.

The 16mm version of the camera is
similar in design to the DS8.

Either camera will take an auxiliary
400 fo[...]tions that
will provide long running capability.

The new exposure meter has no moving
needle, but solid state electronics with LED
display. The CdS cell is behind the lens and
gives accurate measurement whether the
camera is running or not. It drives the lens

DEPEND ON IT

ARTRANSA PARK FILM STUDIOS. E[...]servo motor, so
you can concentrate on filming.

The meter is also coupled with f.p.s.
control, the variable shutter opening and
film sensitivity (10-400 ASA).

The speed range is remarkable: 8, 18, 25,
48, 64 and[...]r lap dissolves.

Two sync sound systems: A built-in pilot
tone, 50Hz at 25 fps for use with pilot tone
tape recorders and single frame pulse sync
for use with the new pulse systems. No
extras to buy.

Lenses are[...]era
lenses with adapters. Choose a lens to create
the effect you want. You might like to start

IT'S[...]are
its compact dimensions and weight (7lbs)
with what you're carrying around.

Now which is the ugly duckling?

When writing for literatur[...]

He was the Director of the Film, Radio and
Yélevision Board of the Australia Council,
now hes Director of the Creative
Development Branch, Australian Film
Commission. Hes moving his ofiice to the
Commission, but apart from that its
business as u[...]Radio,
Video Centres, Script Development
Grants. In all nothing has been changed
lzy the move.

CC When the Government changed the
A.F.C.’s Act to allow it to take on the
Board’s role, we retained the words
‘experimental’ and ‘creative’ as part of the
act so the A.F.C. is now empowered to

continue the encouragement and the
of experimental and creative film

act[...]ern. My job is still to see that ‘ ‘ j .. _
the editor who wants to produce his own i g -‘.155 . _.
film gets that chance, or the writers get
their chance to develop. Let me say here _ 4 V . Q} *
that just because these functions are now , 3'4 . _

- A L

with the Commission it won’t mean we -

will be looki[...]e commercial viability, or indeed be held back by the change. It’s essential
any commercial viability[...]when something comes up which could assistance to the media’s development
have a commercial future then its only problems. The money end of the industry
down the corridor to John Daniels Project wont have much f[...]ent Branch. I’m thinking of continue to develop the innovative or

films like Oz and F] Holden, they came to newer talent. The Australian film industry
the Board first and then on to the A.F.C. just can’t run on a closed up, tight bas[...]cial development.

We can Speed up a now Next in this series, John Daniel on Project Development.
we’re all under the same roof .3)

Speed: 100 ASA. belongs to the Gevacolor negative- Whitehorse Road 372-38[...]

pe Mora, Scott[...]Papers is produced with financial assistance from the Film, Radio and Television Board of the
Australia Council. Articles represent the views of their authors and not necessarily those of the Editors. While
every care is taken of manuscripts and materials supplied for this magazine, neither the Editor nor the Publishers accept
any liability for loss or damage which may arise. This magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the
prior permission of the copyright owner. Cinema Papers is published quart[...]Pty. Ltd. January, 1977.

Front cover: Greg Rowe in the South Australian Film Corporation production of S[...]220

Persistence of Vision,

Film Movement and the
Phi Phenomenon: 223

‘Recommended price only.

As a result of sales drives by producers at
the Cannes Film Festival in May and MIFED
in October, 1976 has seen a breakthrough
for the distribution of Australian films
overseas.

More[...]nd 20
television productions were screened during
the festivals, and a list of sales resulting from
fes[...]l marketing
initiatives by producers (represented in
many cases by the marketing and distribu-
tion division of the Australian Film Corpora-
tion. headed by Alan Wardrope) follows this
item.

Two features in particular made con-
siderable impact on overseas[...]Dog Morgan for a guarantee of U.S.
$300,000, and in a separate deal acquired
world sales rights.

The film opened in New York on
September 22 under its original title of Mad
Dog, and was given the same first release
muitl-cinema break as The Godfather, open-
ing in four Loews Manhattan houses in-
ciuding the prestigious State and Orpheum.
The first week's box-office returns were a
healthy U.S.$52,000. The following week

Mad Dog splashed over the 40 theatre
Fla ship showcase clocking up
U.S. 185,000.

Mad Dog's Los Angeles release is currently
in progress and the film has played in
Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Washington DC,
San Francisco and Hawaii, with the rest of the
U.S. to follow. Outside the U.S., Mad Dog has
recently showcased in 12 cinemas in Toronto
and a London opening is expected early In
the new year.

The New York critical reaction to the film
was mixed. But in Los Angeles, the fllmmaking
capital, critics acclaimed the film's originality
and high production standards, in particular
Dennis Hopper's performance as
bushran[...]Mike Moi-
|oy's cinematography.

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times
(October 27) described the film as “a stunn-
ing epic. . . universal and t[...]y change
all that." Similar rave notices appeared in the
Los Angeles Hera/d-Examiner (Ann
Salisbury, October 29), and the December is-
sue of Playboy.

Meanwhile In London, Laurence Myers
and Bill Gavin of the newly-formed GTO Film
Distributors picked up Picn[...]ng
Rock with a healthy cash upfront advance.
Once in release Picnic confirmed that its
festival popularity could be turned into box-
office, and in four weeks at three first run
theatres —- including the prestigious West
End ABC Shaftesbury Avenue —.clocked up
more than £44,000.

in spite of initial trade reviews which put
Picnic into the “art film" class, the reaction
from London critics was almost unanimous
praise for the film. In particular, Alexander
Walker in The Evening Standard and John
Russell Taylor in Sighfand Sound acclaimed
the film's haunting qualities and visual
beauty.

The Fiimways co-production Goodbye
Norma Jean has also opened in London and
has chalked up more than £20,000 in four

weeks in the West End.

On other fronts, caddie picked up two
awards at the September San Sebastian
Festival: the Special Jury Prize, and an award
to Helen Morse for Best Actress. And in
Beverly Hills, the newly-formed inter
Planetary Pictures are reported to have paid
a six-figure sum for the U.S. rights to Film
Australia's Let the Balloon Go. RS

200 — Cinema Papers. January

S[...]ie
Germany
France
Belgium
Switzerland
Canada

Let The Balloon Go
U.S.

Germany

Italy

Belgium

The Treapaeaere
Britain

Italy

Spain

Latin America[...]50 NSW filmmakers recently
formed themselves into the Association of
independent Filmmakers with the aim of
creating optimum conditions for the com-
merciai distribution and exhibition of
Australian short films. The AlF points out that
in recent years a number of quality short
films have[...]have ob-
tained theatrical or television release. in fact,
ironically they are often seen by larger
audiences overseas than in Australia.

One of the first steps of the AIF was to put
a submission to the Australian Film Commis-
sion, a body which is directly involved in the
future of independent filmmakers through its
financing and marketing activities.

As one of the pre-conditions of AFC
funding of cinema or televi[...]distributor, one might surmise - as do
members of the AIF — that the national
broadcasting service should be involved in
pre-production discussion with independent
filmmakers. indeed, one ABC staff member
indicated recently that In future the Features
Department would like to meet independent
filmmakers prior to production. This would
offer the filmmaker a better chance of having
his film acce[...]g policy has
been discounted by an ABC spokesman. in
fact, there does not appear to be an official
ABC[...]Australian films at all. All product submitted
to the Features Department, whether
Australian or overseas, is assessed in the
same way.

Another area of concern to members of
the AIF is the government's production
facility, Film Australia,[...]ditionally
offered some production opportunity to in-
dependent filmmakers. However, in the past
two years, only eight films have been con-
t[...], editors, camera
operators and writers, and over the past two
years these contracts have amounted to
something like $350,000. The AIF believes
that over the next few years, these allocations
should be significantly increased.

The AIF submission to the AFC outlines in
detail problems facing independent film-
makers and pinpoints the difficulties of
producing, distributing and exhibiting in-
dependent films in this country.

in an attempt to draw attention to the
problems facing independent producers,
Cinema Papers sought and obtained permis-
sion from the AlF’s working party to publish
the submission in this issue. However, per-
mission was later withdrawn on the grounds
that publication would leopardlze the suc-
cess of the submission.

Hopefully, in the next Issue the AIF will
make the contents of the submission
available for publication. KW

HOYTS INNOVATES

Since the appointment of John Mostyn to
the managing directorship of Hoyts Theatres
some 18 months ago, the film industry has
been closely observing the attempts by this
traditionally conservative chain to lazz up its
image.

Some of the new Hoyts gimmicks have
proved successful: the new art house image
of Sydney's Mayfair Theatre; the upgrading
of group sales and party bookings; the
development of Melbourne’s Cinema Centre
and Mid City com piexes. Others have proved
less successful: the attempt to turn
Melbourne's Athenaeum cinema into an art
house, the new mini Cinema 6 in
Melbourne's Mid City; and the so-called
‘family’ drive-in at Bulleen In Melbourne.

The latter experiment was partly set in mo-
tion to appease a vocal minority who have
been lobbying state governments in Victoria
and NSW in an attempt to have Fl certificate
films banned from drive-in theatres. Hoyts
spent more than $10,000 promoting the fami-
ly drive-in concept, playing combination G,
NRC and M rated programs. But all to no
avail — the public stayed away.

At the same time Hoyts, like everyone else
in the exhibition industry, are presently reel-
ing under the worst slump that the film
business has known since the introduction of
black and white television in 1956. Film after
film is going down without even[...]al report and although profits were up —
due to the smash successes of The Oman

and Silent Movie — foreign theatre opera-
tlons were down a wopplng 74 per cent from
U.S.$-1,631,000 in 1975 (third quarter) to
U.S.$1,193,000. Australian involvement with
Hoyts was specifically blamed for the down-
turn, and Hoyts admit admissions are down
almost 60 per cent on last year.

Fortunately, Hoyts have The Omen (which
In its first week in Melbourne grossed an all
time record $40,000 plus), which will show-
case in their new seven cinema Entertain-
ment Centre, due to open over a seven-day
period from December 16.

The Entertainment Centre, which will sub-
stantially upgrade Hoyts’ Sydney outlets, is
claimed to be the world's iar est cinema
complex, housing, in addition 0 the seven
cinemas, a shopping complex and dlscothe-
q[...]ve already placed three of their
older cinemas on the property market and
others will meet a similar fate once the
'sevenpiex' opens.

Launching the new complex will be Hex-
agon’s Mn Eliza Fraeer, Columbia's Barney
as well as The Eagle Hae Landed. The Pink
Panther strikee Again. Couein couaine and
Si[...]PENDENT PRODUCERS HIT BY
‘DOWN TIME’ SOUEEZE

The color TV bonanza has unexpectedly
given local independent producers a new
headache. The Film and Television Produc-
tion Association of A[...]nreasonably low rates for
producing commercials.

The in-house activity of stations has in-'
creased recentiy as they try to keep their ex-[...]quipment occupied during
down time. Stations have the ability to write-
off production expenses against[...]dependent
production houses.

Mr Graham Farrar of the FTPAA said
recently: "it would appear that one Sy[...]a com-
merclai which would normally cost $5000."
The commercial was placed solely on the
station concerned, and of the $300 charged,
$280 was for materials. “Presumably the
rerjrcijainina $20 was for labor," Mr Farrar
sai .

in addition, the association claimed
that stations are encouraging television
program packages to use the facilities of
production houses associated with s[...]han those of completely independent
film houses.

The existence of prosperous and adven-
turous independent production houses was a
notable catalyst in the establishment of the
feature industry: Royce Smeal‘s involvement
in The Cars That Ate Paria, Bilcock and Cop-
plng's in Stork and the Alvin films, Fred
Schepisi and Film House in The Devil’:
Playground.

Filmmakers will be watching the stations‘
activities with interest, while the FTPAA plans
to discuss the matter with its legal advisers
who believe that the stations’ activities are in
contravention of the restraint of trade provi-
sions of the Trade Practices Act. GG

EXHIBITORS AND DISTRIBUTORS
INVEST

No doubt, flushed by the success of their
financial involvement in Picnic at Hanging
Rock, and the success of Caddie, the
Greater Union Organization and GUO Film
Distributors recently annognced further par-
ticipation in local production.

Presently shooting is Michael Thornhlli’s
The F. J. Holden on a budget of around
$290,00[...]

Roadshow, in addition to its continuing in-
volvement In _l-lexagon — who are currently
completing High Roll — have also made a
small investment In Joan Long's The Picture
Show Man, which they will distribute. Joh[...]wing Fantaam and Goodbye Norma
Jean, Fllmways are in the process of setting
up an ongoing production facility to be called
the Australian International Film Corporation
with Tony Ginnane as its executive direc-
tor. The AIFC are presently shooting a sequel
to Fantaam and will soon go into production
with Body Count.

Of the American-owned distributor
members of the Motion Picture Distributors’
Association, only[...]arney have
turned some of their profits back into the in-
dustry. However, with the local success of
films like Picnic and caddie, and the major
U.S. distribution deals of Mad Dog Morgan,
and Let The Balloon Go, perhaps 1977 will
see the entry of the American-owned dis-
tributors into local production.

The revenue such investments could
generate would be of benefit to all con-
cerned, and there is no doubt that the dis-
tribution expertise of the majors would have
a significant impact on the local industry.

RS
GREEN AND IAC REPORTS

Two reports have been issued that raise
serious questions about the Government's
intentions in relation to the performing arts,
broadcasting and‘ the use of television to
relay or even substitute for live perfor-
mances.

The Australian Industries Commission has
recommended that:

1. The assistance currently given to sup-
port the operatlng costs of performing arts
organizations should be phased out over
the next five years.
2. The available assistance should be
progressively redirected towards (and
shared reasonably equally among) the
three major objectives of: improving
education in the performing arts, especial-
ly the understanding among children of
the basic elements of these arts; ex-
panding dlssemlnation of the performing
arts to the community generally, mainly by
the use of modern technology; encourag-
ing innovations In the performing arts, par-
tlcularly those relating to the distinctive
characteristics of the Australian com-
munity.

There is a close relationship between
these findings and the report of the Green in-
quiry into broadcasting in Australia, es-
pecially where they Involve the use of televi-
slon to transmit drama, opera and music
programs. The Green Inquiry was prevented.
because of its terms of reference, from prob-
ing the essentlal area of the economic basis
and present viability of broadcasting. So the
way is clear for the Government to recom-
mend drastic cuts in subsidies to the per-
forming arts and at the same time ask its new
Broadcasting Tribunal (to be set up following
the Green recommendations) to consider the
broader use of educational and cultural
programs through the television channels.

Considering that local content in any
serious cultural terms has fallen throughout
the past three years, it is unlikely that the
commercial stations will increase their ex-
penditure In this area. And the ABC, which
last year televised more than 60% loca[...]projected quota of Australian drama
programs for the coming year.

The worst result for the performing arts
would be a trendy commitment on the part of
the Government to a greater use of television
even wi[...]g out of grants to
performing arts organizations. The assump-
tion is that the arts can survive without per-
manent, established companies; that needs
will somehow produce the organization to
put on these traditional and expensive per-
formances._

There is also, throughout the report, a con-
fusion about the question of standards.
Although none of the witnesses to the Inquiry
were able to define precisely what they
ineant by standards of excellence, it does not
mean that these standards do not exist. And
to sidestep the problem of maintaining stan-
dards by attempting to use television to
duplicate what few performances might con-
tinue to exist appears absurd.

The Green inquiry into broadcasting is
ambiguous on the same question of stan-
dards. it assumes that these will be laid down
in codes of broadcasting to be drawn up by
the ABC and commercial stations, after the
formation of the new statutory bodies to con-
trol broadcastlng. But It does not give any in-

dicatlon of what the standards might be, or
the criteria for assessing the standards. '

in the case of both reports, the likely result
of this uncertainty is to give the Government
the opportunity to insist on simple criteria of
economic efficiency. The IAC report is highly
critical of the failure of any of the bodies cur-
rently receiving assistance for performing
arts to defend their right to grants; and the
Minister for Postal and Telecommunications,
Mr Robinson, has repeatedly defended the
proposed new structures for broadcasting in
terms of their supposed greater efficiency.

The real danger is that all other criteria for
excellence in broadcasting, and the perform-
ing arts, will be Ignored, and the Govern-
ment will be able to pursue its path of r[...]ther kind of
apparent elite. J0‘H

BIAS?

Given the city-based tensions and
jeaiousies that exist in Australia, it is only
natural that various funding bodies have
been accused of state-based bias.

The funding activities of one such body,
the former Film, Radio and Television Board
of the Australia Council, are listed below.
These statistics relate to loans and grants
made through the Basic Production Fund
(Experimental Film Fund), the Advanced
Production Fund (Film Production Fund) and
the Script Development Fund during the
1975/76 financial year.

While the FRTVB has now been transfer-
red to the AFC where It will operate as the
Creative Development Branch, whether or
not it wi[...]ate along already
established guidelines is moot. In fact,
whether it will work any better at all is also in
doubt

Obviously the Commission has not yet fully
analyzed the operations of the FRTVB, nor
has it formulated policy on the operation of
the Creative Development Branch. Hopefully
the following analysis will assist the Com-
mission in its review of the Board's funding
activities.

While data for all states has been included
in the following survey, it should be pointed
out that a[...]mania are extremely low,
and care should be taken in interpreting the
statistics.

EXPERIMENTAL FILM FUND
Total grants[...]58
OLD 7 30 23
SA 6 29 21
ACT 1 7 14
TAS 1 1 100
The 107 grants made in the 1975/76 finan-

clai year totalled $254,513. Of this $102,566
— or 40.3 per cent — was allocated to the
NSW applicants, and $102,310 — or 40.2 per
cent — to Victoria. The balance of $49,637 —
or 19.5 per cent — was distributed among
the other states. The average NSW grant was
$3419 and the Victorian grant $1860.

The assessors for the Basic Production
Fund were:

NSW Anthony Buckley[...]2 10 20
OLD 0 3 0
ACT 0 0 —
SA 0 6 0
TAS 0 3 0
The 24 grants made during the year total-

led $393,603. Of this $309,639 — or 78.7 per
cent — was allocated to NSW applicants, and
$57,164 — or 14.5 per cent — to the Victorian
applicants. The balance of $26,800 — or 6.8
per cent — was distributed among the other
states. The average NSW grant was $21,866
while the average Victorian grant was
$14,291.

The assessors for the Advanced Produc-
tion Fund were:

NSW Don Cromble[...]Howard Ruble

There were no assessors from other
states.

SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT FUND

Total grants . . .[...]4
SA 3 1 1 27
WA 1 8 12
TAS O 0 —
ACT 0 1 0

The 44 grants made during the year total-
led $72,500, of this $52,550 — or 7[...]— or 17.4 per cent — to Victorian applicants.
The balance of $7300 — or 10.1 per cent —
was distributed among the other states. The
average NSW grant was $1752 and the Vic-

torian grant $1581.
The assessors — all from NSW — were:

Chris McCul[...]e Moya Wood

Ted Olson AB

ARE OUR NUTS TOO BIG?

The expense figure of a cinema, or “nut"
as the U.S. film trade refers to it, is a crucial
factor in determining the amount of film hire
that a distributor will receive from an ex-
hibitor, and ultimately the money that the
producer and investors will receive from the
distributor.

it has been said that Melbourne and[...]igures
higher, on average, than any other cinemas
in the world outside New York's first-run
Manhattan houses (see list below).

Exhibitors are reluctant to provide the ex-
pense figures of their cinemas for publica-
t[...]n
$3000 and $12,000. These figures are made
up of the following elements:

(1) Fixed cost items includi[...]mall
cinemas, and old large cinemas are
somewhere in between.

Although there are some half dozen
separate deals used between exhibitors and
distributors, the most common one for
general release films is the so-called Quarter
Scale, or Schedule I formula, w[...]of receipts to expenses and
is used to calculate the film hire percentage
rate payable to the distributor by the ex-
hibitor.

Under this scheme, the gross box-office
receipts for the week (excluding Sunday,
which is treated separately) are divided by
the total theatre expenses allowed for the
cinema. The ratio obtained is checked
against the formula to ascertain the percen-
tage of film hire payable. The formula
schedule is set out below.

To take a hypothetical case: patrons pay
$6000 over the box-office at the cinema for
the week — this is called the gross box-
office. The cinema has an expense figure of
$3000. Divide the box-office by the expense
figure, which in this case is 2.000. The for-
mula rates this ratio as earning 40 per cent,
which is $2400 of the $6000 gross. This is the
payable film hire.

The formula provides for a higher percen-
tage of the gross box-office to be paid if there
is a higher take at the box-office. It is easy to
see by playing around with the formula that a
high grossing film will pay off its producer
much faster, because generally the deduc-
tlons a distributor makes from the film hire
he receives will be constant.

It is also easy to see that if the expense
figures for a particular cinema could be
lowered — yet all other things remain equal
— then the producer would recoup faster.

RS

TH E QUARTER[...]ratios of receipts to expenses for deter-
mining the film hire percentage rate payable under
this agre[...]HALL (Rockefe||ers—6,200)(1)
see below

RIVOLI (United Artists Theatre Corp.-—
1,545) . . . . . . . .[...]56) . . . . . . . . . . .. $5,250

WE WERE WRONG

The editor wishes to apologize for any em-
barrassmen[...]Robert Kirby for
incorrectly referring to him as the chairman
of directors of Hexagon Productions in an
item titled Hexagon Marches On In The
Quarter column of the Sept-Oct 76 issue. Mr
Kirby is in fact the managing director.

Cinema Papers, January — 201

Emile cle Antonio and the Weatherpeople

The Weather Underground grew out of Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS), formed in the United States in the
early 1960s. Several Weatherpeople went underground in 1969
and have been sought by the F B I since for unlawful flight to
avoid arrest in connection with the Days of Rage (Chicago,
1969). In 1974 the Weather Underground issued their collective
polit[...]mile de Antonio is a producer/director whose work in-

cludes the films “Point of Order”, “In The Year Of The Pig”,
and “Millhouse: A White Comedy”. After reading Prairie Fire
he proposed to the Weather Underground that a film would
reach more of their intended public than print would. The

Weatherpeople agreed to do a film with him, and[...]Jeff Jones and
Cathy Wilkerson to represent them in the film. Emile de An-
tonio and filmmakers Mary La[...]askell Wexler then
formed a collective to produce the film titled “Underground”.

The three filmmakers and the unfinished film were sub-
poenaed by the government before a Los Angeles grand jury in
May, 1975, but they refused to co-operate in any way. They
were supported by many filmmakers and other people, and the
government was subsequently forced to drop the subpoenas.

Michie Gleason, a filmmaker and member of the Los
Angeles Prairie Fire Workshop, interviewed Emile de Antonio
on the occasion of the Los Angeles opening of “Underground”.

In “Underground” the
Weatherpeople discuss their per-
sonal histories in relation to their
current politics. Could you give any
key points in your own political
history that brought you to be in-
terested in a group like the Weather
Underground?

I’m a generation removed from
the Weather Underground people. I
lived through and participated in,
as an older person, a great many of
the struggles that they were in. The
right wing in this country and the
apathetic mass of TV viewers
regard thein the best
way, which is by finding out how
pacifist methods failed. They were
in the civil rights movement. They
came out of the civil rights move-
ment, and like others, applied the
tactics of the civil rights movement
to the peace movement.

I followed that line too. I was
divorced from any political group-
ing, because living in the late 1940s
and l950s in this country there was
only Communist Party, United
States, which was ‘simply not a
viable party for me. So you became
isolated, which is the great thing

Opposite: Emile dc Antonio.

“Coul[...]I’d like

you to

transcribe? This is a message in a sense from me to the
Australian people. I know my film “In The Year Of The
Pig” was the one that the Australian resistance used in the
working class and union resistance and peace resistance to
Australian involvement to the war in Vietnam, and that
“Millhouse” is the most successful American documentary

that’s ever played in Australia, so the people have a wide
range of experience with my kind of left politics. Now the
important thing to say is that this film, “Und[...]not my

film. It’s a collective film, whereas the others

weren’t. “Underground” is a genuine[...],

made by three people.”

that I saw happening in this country

in 1960 when SDS was formed. It
reminded me of my own youth and

I identified right away with these
people. In my youth there was the
Young Communist League and
there was the American Student
Union which was on the Attorney-
General’s list. They weren’t as dis-
ciplined or as together as SDS, but
it was organized for the same thing.
It was to fight against Hitler, to
fight fascism in this country, to
fight racism.

By the time 1962 rolled around
people were more sophisticated, but
finally, when the Democratic
Convention occurred in Chicago in
1968, you could see that this stu-
dent movement and the peace

movement, the legitimate pacifist
movement against the war, were
destroyed, because the state wasn’t
going to allow it to happen. Then
you had a series of activities on the
part of the government that were
some violent and some clever. One
clever one was Nixon’s idea, ofget-
ting rid of the draft. This got the
middle class resistance to the war
out of the picture. It got the young
kids who were in college un-
interested.

The violence that came with the
Chicago convention of 1968 was
followed by Jackson State and
Kent State. And you see what is
lacking in American political life
and, I suspect, in Australian
political life as well, is passion. The

Weatherpeople stand for passion.
They had a pass[...]this violence, a response of outrage
that nobody was doing anything,
and this is why they did the Days of
Rage and why I defend that action.
Although at the time I thought it
was partly crazy, I was still filled
with admiration that a small group
of people would take on the entire
police apparatus of Chicago — not
one day, but four days, day after
day. And already there was that
strong feminist position built into
that. There was a separate women’s
action.

I think yesterday’s review of
Underground in the Los Angeles
Times was the most extraordinary
review l’ve ever read in the straight
press, because the writer ended his
paragraph by saying he was ner-
vous about it, but maybe it was the
wave of the future. And that’s what
I believe.

Following up on the women’s is-
sue, you bring up in the film that the
Weatherpeople formerly had a
tough-male posture, and they talk
about how the women helped them
and made them change. How impor-
tant do you think that change was to
their present organization as you ex-
perienced it?

I think it’s the most profound

change that’s happened to them,
frankly. Before, it was the anger of

Cinema Papers, January — 203

iflnitrh States Bistrirt (Enurt

FOR THE

,_.CEP.~'TRAL D15 15'! OE CL!-IFQBN A

To EMILE[...]SKEL1. WEXLER

You are hereby commanded to appear in the United States 1')-sirirt (‘nun for thr-

mi. 13463, 1300 ms. Cthae.
312 North spring street

If! 75 at9 :30 o'clock A, v‘

Central

District of In 1?" -I - 2

California "
Los Angeles

on theV"'1f'.8,
and all sound tracks and sound recordirigs made in conne-:r.ion with
the filming of such motion pictures, concerning a group known as

the Weathermen or weather Underground.

This subpoena is issued on application or the UNITED STATES I

[CB tycg

EDWARD M. KRITZMAN
213-688-2391

-am

—-7 , 4
/ »

fl%«,..,
Ls /-r,..- \
...-.. V...

4

/-

Date may 22
WILLIAM D. KELLER
Un.i.zed..states Att__¢_a§*_r_iey"__ ‘_

I mm. ID! -val: nu m[...]that courage, for
example, belonged to men. That
was t e key to the Days of Rage:
there was a separate women's ac-
tion, in which women with helmets
and clubs went up against the

olice. It wasn’t just an attempt to
ose white skin privilege on the part
of males, it was to show that
women could do it too. The
organization was still male-
dominated when that happened, but
the growth that came out of it was
also the triumph of the collective,
and it was the triumph of women
organized as women. The triumph
is the fact that it finally makes no
difference who the chief
spokesperson is, whether it’s Ber-
nardin[...]ers or
Jeff Jones.

They’ve come through it all the
way so that it’s not a problem for
them as it is for people living out-
side. The person who speaks best
speaks, and there’s no hang-up
about it. That’s the death of sexism,
but that’s a very hard place t[...]ves have been
split up. You have radical lesbians
in one place, NOW (National
Organization for Women) in
another place, many different
groups . . . They simply lack the
cohesiveness and revolutionary
firmness of the Weatherpeople.

How did your attitudes toward
the Weather Underground change
or grow as you were as[...]another and such
a true sense of a collective as the
Weather Underground. In the short
time I was with them this had a
profound influence on me personal-
ly. I never could have wo[...]ed them collectively.
Mary, who worked with me on
the film, used to work for me. So I,
in middle age, had to do a whole
180 degrees turn in my attitudes
toward work, and toward my
relationship with a woman who had
worked for me in the past and was
now actually equal with me. We
achieved this in that Mary’s vote
every time was absolutely the equal
of my vote, or maybe even more,
because I had something to make
up for. Haskell was never truly a
part of this collective. He just shot
the film and stayed here in L.A.,
but Mary and I sweated it out nine
months c[...]ments, day-to-day
criticism, self-criticism.

But the experience of this film
has changed my whole view. It’s
made me in total su port of the
Weather Underground). The nicest
thing that happened last night at

the theatre — and I’m a fairly
tough guy and I don't shed tears
ever — was that Jeff Jones’ father
came up to me and said:[...]seen him, and I heard him." And I
said to him: “The only thing I can
say is that I would be proud to be
the father of Jeff Jones. I think you
should be proud[...]his revolutionary ar-
dor.” And we shook hands in a way
that two people can when they
believe what they’re saying.

It’s great that the families of all
these people have seen them on
fi[...]ork and saw it with
Jennifer, her sister, who’s in Prairie
Fire Organizing Committee in New
York. Cathy Wilkerson’s mother
came to the first press screening in
New York. Billy Ayers’ brother
saw it in Madison, Wisconsin,
U.S., and, of course, the Boudins,
who are movement lawyers, saw the
film before anybody because we
had to have lawyers check it out.
We didn’t want to have anything in
the film that would hurt them from
a legal point of view. The families
of these people are all positive, and
admire and support them.

Do you view making the film as a
political act?

Absolutely. Particularly Mary
and I. We regard the film as a
political weapon. The first screen-
ing of Underground was at Hostos
Community College in the South
Bronx (New York City), a
neighborhood which is 100 per cent
Black and Puerto Rican. The city
of New York is closing down every
public facility because the inner city
is a ghetto. They closed down this
col[...]d a hospital. We were enraged by
this, so we took the film up there.
The students had taken over the
college and were holding it, and we
played the film as a revolutionary
act. We spoke with the people and
explained the Weather
Underground and explained their
position[...]them because their heads are get-
ting busted all the time.

We see the film as an organizing
instrument. We don’t even ask that
people agree with the Weather
Underground, we simply ask that
they look and listen to the film and
address themselves to the questions
raised in an honest way. You won’t
hear one word from any of those
guys running in the beauty contest
for President of the United States
about the main issues —- racism or
imperialism or American domestic
colonialism or the role of women.
You will not hear any one of the
major candidates talk about one
goddammed[...]

What kind of distribution of the
film is now necessary to he consis-
tent with the politics of the Weather
Underground?

When you are in this system,
even if you are a revolutionary, you
have to use some of the system,
which is what revolutionaries have
always done. So I’m happy that last
night at the theatre in Venice,
California, they had more people
on a Wednesday night than they’ve
had in years. And I’m happy that
it’s going to run for weeks in
Boston and in New York in regular
theatres where people are going to
pay a lot of money. It’s not the
money that’s interesting, it’s the
fact that classes of people who
don’t ordinaril[...]film
are going to see it. Then, after these
runs in regular theatres, it will be
given away. But first you have to
create the illusion in people’s minds
— and it’s the truth — that the film
is a film. That can only be done by
playing it in theatres, then univer-
sities. It will never play on TV in
this country. You don’t expect it to
play on TV. But I expect it to play
on TV in other countries.

Wherever people can’t pay, we
want it given away, and the dis-
tributor has agreed to this. We also
hope th[...]Committee —— your group — can
someday take the film and show it
around and use it as a centre for
discussion.

The film is going to be in the

Sydney and Melbourne film
festivals and that’s going to drive
the CIA crazy! Right from the
beginning this film has helped the
Weather Underground. When we
were subpoenaed we put the
Weather Underground back on the
front page. And when we resisted
the subpoena we were back on the
front page all over the country. The
Los Angeles Times features are
syndicated in 300 papers, and
Narda Zacchino’s article on us in
that paper was headlined
“Weatherpeople — Folk Heroes of
the Radicals.” Now, for the first
time in Australia and in Europe,
people are going to see genuine
American[...]ries who are
living underground and who ex-
press the most advanced kind of
revolutionary politics. That’s a step
forward.

Where can people get the film?

People in Australia can get the
film by writing to: RBC Films,
933 N. La Brea, Ho[...]stralian distributor since it’s be-
ing seen at the festivals. This is
what has happened in the past. In
the case of Millhouse a regular
commercial distributo[...]to distribute Millhouse
and instead I gave it to the Film-
makers Co-op which is first of all a
collec[...]wo ways and
one part is sexual freedom stuff and

the other part is political, so I gave
it to them. I think that Mary and I
would make the same decision here.
We would like to give it for dis-
tribution in Australia to a political

group.

One thing that Prairie Fire and
the Weatherpeople in the film make
clear is the importance that they’ve
placed on disciplined study of
ideology in relation to class strug-
gle. With that in mind, what are the
main responsibilities for above-
ground people as this film is dis-
tributed?

The main responsibility of above-
ground people who are sympathetic
to the Weather Underground, like
the PFOC (Prairie Fire Organizing
Committee), is obviously to make
the film available to as many people
as possible, because it's a tool. And
just as important as the film is
Prairie Fire which is where all this
began. And just as important as
Prairie Fire is the periodical
Osawatomie, Which is the way in
which the Weather Underground
brings itself up to date on a[...]se people aren’t isolated. They
aren’t really in that dinky little
room in the film. That’s a set, just

like a sef’in Hollywood; it’s a prop,
filled with props. The[...]I’d like to say something about
PFOC. I think the real future of the
Weather Underground depends on
the involvement of PFOC groups. I
think this is the hardest question
the Weather Underground has to
face, and l’ll be cr[...]to wait for secret signals and direc-
tives from the Underground? I
think that the Weather
Underground as it goes through its
stages[...]lf-criticism
has to lay down a general line. Then
the PFOC groups have to be
autonomous, free to make m[...]akes than from our vic-
tories and she's correct. The
Weather Underground, I ‘hope, is
loose enough to work in an open
way with PFOC so that your group
here, for example, which I find
woefully small but intensely in-
teresting, can be free to go ahead
and organize[...]ize and try
to change people’s hearts and
minds the way you do it. And
you’re going to make mistake[...]ver your shoulder. This is
like an open letter to the Weather
Underground now that I’m speak-
ing to you. Their future is really
dependent to a great extent on
what you people can do. You peo-
ple have a tremendous[...]ndent autonomous‘
units.

I’d like to discuss the filmmaking
process. How did you structure not
only your working relationships but
also your decision—making policies
both before and after the film so that
they, too, would be consistent with[...]e Fire as you
have. Then once we went ahead to
do the film there were long waiting
periods, because dealing with peo-
ple in thethe history of the Weather
Underground. We went back and
read all the communiques and saw
all the mistakes the Weatherpeople
had made, and there were a lot of
mistakes.

Their recognition of those mis-
takes is the most impressive thing
of all about them, frankly.[...]ism so many times they don’t
mean anything. But the
Weatherpeople really practise it
and recognize th[...]nolithic, frozen
organization or party like, say, the
present party in the Soviet Union.

Continued on P. 276

Cinema[...]

Snow White also ran into trouble with the censor in the 305
because of its scary cupboard skeleton scene.

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 120 Days in Sodom: one of many ac-
claimed films to be banned outright in Australia.

Censorship Works

Janet Strickland[...]sor

This is a revised version ofa paper given at the
Australian National Commission for the
UNESCO seminar — “Entertainment and
Society”, in June 1976. The paper will be part of
a UNESCO report of the seminar (to be edited
by Dr. G. Caldwell and Dr. Paul Wilson).

This survey concentrates on the pragmatic. It
discusses the practices of control and explains
the part the Film Censorship Board plays in the
control of films in Australia today.

The key questions are: What sort of decisions
are made? How are they made? Who makes
them? and Why are they made at all?

The debate on the effects of film on children
and the community at large, and the degree of
control which is both legitimate and tolerable in
a democracy, has raged unabated since films
were first introduced into Australia in 1896.

Cases of juvenile delinquency, attributed to
the influence of the cinema, contributed to pres-
sure, which resulted in the establishment of for-
mal procedures in NSW in 1908, under the
Theatre and Public Halls Act.

The Commonwealth Film Censorship Board
wasthe
ages of 6 and 16. (A couple of curious decisions
in the 1930s — Snow White (Disney) was refused
general approval because it was thought that the
skeleton in the cupboard might frighten the
children; The Haunted Barn by Frank Thring
Snr. was accorded similar treatment as the cen-
sor thought the whistling of the wind might upset
the sensitive.).

With the onset of the Depression, pressure
from exhibitors brought about the removal of
the 6-16 clause and a new system of classifica-
tions was introduced, placing the responsibility
for children and adolescents’ viewing fairly on
the shoulders of the parents.

The classifications were “For General Ex-
hibition[...]Children”, and
“Suitable Only for Adults”. The classifications
were all of an advisory nature.

Between the years 1947 and 1949, all states
passed legislation, concluding formal agree-
ments with the Commonwealth, and delegating
to this body all their powers and functions. (No
appeals provisions in Victoria).

1970 saw the establishment of the Films
Board of Review, replacing the single Appeal
Censor.

In 1971 the “R” certificate was introduced (in
spite of strong industry pressure). The “R” cer-
tificate heralded a new era in film censorship in
Australia. At last adults could see, if they so
desired, adult material treated in an adult way,
which they had been deprived of see[...]could be
protected from too early an exposure to the
adult world, and adults would have some warn-
ing on the type of film they might expect to see.

In 1976 the Film Censorship Board is primari-
ly concerned with the classification of films and
informing the public on the nature of a par-
ticular film.

The Man Who Fell To Earth: released in an R version
overseas, but brutally cut in Australia to meet the require-
ments of an M classification.

We are only concerned with the interpretation
of the law, not with its enforcement.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE
FILM CENSORSHIP BOARD

Membership: The Film Censorship Board is a
full-time nine-member statutory board made up
of the Chief Censor, the Deputy Chief Censor
and seven Board members. As I[...]nded little people working away with our
scissors in some dimly-lit dungeon. I have
always believed that the pen is mightier than the
scissors. There are five men and four women on
the Board and the ages range from mid—20s to
mid-50s — with the majority of the Board being
under 40.

Facilities: At our premises in the Imperial Ar-
cade, Sydney we have eight theatrett[...]connections to
all TV stations and equipment for the viewing of
both 1/2” and 3/4” videotape cassettes.

We handled l2,052 films in 1975 — 1066 com-
mercial theatrical films, 10,996 TV films and
cassettes.

Decision making: Decisions on films are ar-
rived at by a democratic voting system — the
majority wins, and all members are equal.

Two Bo[...]three, five, seven or nine members, depending on
the problematic nature of the film. The full
Board sees a film before it is rejected, and
re-screens occur either when there is a marginal
decision with less than a full Board, or at the re-
quest of Board members who are undecided as
to what their decision should be.

Policy decisions, handling of the media, liais-
ing with other government bodies and officials

etc., are matters for the Chief Censor and/or
Deputy Chief Censor.

THE FUNCTIONS

1. To register films under Commonweal[...]Films)
Regulations.

2. To classify films under the various State
legislations.

3. To act as agents of the Australian Broad-
casting Control Board in respect of imported
television films, or films not made under the
auspices of a TV station.

4. To examine advertising in relation to im-
ported films and Australian films as required,
under the provisions of both Commonwealth
and State legislations.

Avenue of Appeal

Any person aggrieved by any decision of the
censor, in respect of theatrical films, can appeal
to the Films Board of Review. This is, at pre-

Since the establishment of the Films Board of
Review in January 1971, it has met 56 times and
heard appea[...]ms. It has dis-
missed 63 appeals and upheld 30.

The only higher appeal is that direct to the
Minister (the Attorney-General of Australia) —
and he may intervene under Regulation 40 of the
Customs (Cinematograph Films) Regulations.

Since[...]s under this regulation:

(a) Perc June 16, 1971: The Minister (Mr D.
L. C ipp) directs the Chief Film Censor
to withdraw the certificate of registration
dated May 25, 1971,[...]e to film’s registration
after introduction of the “R” certificate.

(b) The Devils January 4, 1972: The Minister
(Mr D. L. Chipp) insists that all advertis-
ing which accompanies the film must car-
ry in plain, bold type a suitable note warn-
ing people of what they might expect in
the film.

(c) Skyjacked August 1972: The Minister
(Mr D. L. Chipp) directs that registration
of the film under Regulation 20 of the
Customs (Cinematograph Films) Regula-

tions be refused.
Language of Love August 2, 1973: The

Minister (Mr Lionel Murphy) directs that
the film be registered and that all publicity
material carry the words “this is a sex
education film.”

(d)

THE PHILOSOPHIES

The Film Censorship Board believes in, and
tries to implement, within the limitation of the
legislation, the censorship policies of both major
political parties. (The following statements were
issued through the Commonwealth Attorney-
General’s Department):[...]ip Policy (August 1974)

“Liberalism recognizes the basic right of
adults to make their own decisions regarding the
material they read, hear or see. Liberal Party
policy will be based on the following principles:

1. Appropriate control of[...]ng, or be viewed
or heard by children open to its influence.
. 2. Continued emphasis on both the freedom
and the responsibility of the press, radio
and television. T
3. Recognition of the family as basic to social
stability and the right of parents to apply
their own religious, social and moral stan-
dards in the care and development of their
children.”

Labor Censorship Policy (February 1973)

“The Labor government’s policy is for federal
laws to conform with the general principles that
adults should be entitled to read, hear and view
what they wish in private and in public and that
persons — and those in their care — be not ex-
posed to unsolicited ma[...]ould like to stress again, that we do not
believe in the traditional concepts of suppression
and repression, but rather in the interpretation
and implementation of the above policies.
Neither are we interested in the enforcement of
our decisions; this is strictly a matter for the
state policing authorities. _ _

In order to fully implement the above policies,
it is our opinion that the law needs to _ be
changed. The stated policies and the_require-
ment to administer the legislation, as it stands

today, places us, sometimes, in a difficult and
often invidious position.

About a year ago, we put a proposition to the
Attorney-General that the law should be
changed in order to implement the then Labor
government’s philosophy, removing the con-
cepts of indecency and obscenity, which were so
difficult to define, and introducing what
amounted to an extra classification, a non-
classification, or “unclassified” system as we
called it.

The idea behind this extra category was that
films which exceeded the limits of an “R” clas-
sification would be r[...]classified,
and allowed to find their own level in the com-
munity, having a regard to state laws relati[...]not be immune
from prosecution under state laws. The idea
seemed to us to have the following merits:

(1) It would more fully implement the
philosophy that adults should be free to
read and hear and see whatever they
wanted to in public or private, and that
persons and those in their care would be
protected from unsolicited material which

was offensive to them. _ _
(2) It would legalize, and thus decriminalize

the dc-facto unclassified system which is
operating in places like Kings Cross.
However, the idea has not been adopted to
date.

CLASSIFICATION OF
THEATRICAL FILMS

The basic idea behind the classification system
is to inform the public on the nature of a film.
Both merit and context are take[...]d to us. However, films are
often cut, either by the importer (sometimes
before submitting them to us) or by the Film
Censorship Board at the request of the importer
— to enable him to gain a lower classi[...]cenes — (i.e. head and shoulder shots) most-
ly in a fairly moral context. There are
problems with t[...]diences — 15 years and over.
A difficulty lies in the public interpretation of
maturity. The film may deal with essentially
adult concepts, but thethe “R” certificate in
®terms of degree of explicitness and overtness.[...]18 years and over.
Adult themes are often treated in an overt
and explicit way. The treatment shows a
greater exploitation of sex and[...]l to children and offen-
sive to some sections of the community. The
“R” serves as a warning. It is the only legally
enforceable classification —— the others are
merely advisory.

We believe that no theme or idea is in itself

Percy paved the way for the introduction of the R certificate
in 1971.

The Devils: only approved for registration on the condition
that publicity material carry explicit warning notices.

Vampyr: uncut in Australia despite scenes of gratuitously
g[...]

:——M

unacceptable in this classification — it is the

treatment of that theme or concept which deter-[...]eptable.

5. Rejected -— under Regulation 13 of the
Customs (Cinematograph Films) Regula-
tions and/or provisions of State Acts relating
to films, which in the opinion of the Censor
are:

(a) indecent or obscene, blasphemous[...]crime;

(c) offensive to a friendly nation or to the
people of a part of the Queen’s domi-
nions; and

(d) undesirable in the public interest.

(Some of state Acts refer to ma[...]re).

Most films currently rejected — and that was
about 3 per cent in 1975 —— are those found
under l3(a) as being[...]ionally been rejected under l3(d) as
being “not in the public interest” —— such as
those inciting to drug abuse, hijacking etc.

The difficulties in defining what is indecent or
obscene is revealed in the court cases in the U.S.
and Britain. In Australia, we fall back on the
“current community standards” test, and say
t[...]if it is grossly offen-
sive to most sections of the community. We
believe that hard-core pornography would be
equated with indecency in most people’s minds.

The films which are most commonly rejected
are those, which in the opinion of the Board, are
pornographic, or feature obscene viole[...]l or pictorial material devoted
overwhelmingly to the explicit depiction of sex-
ual activities in gross detail, with neither accep-
table supportin[...]ortrayed for its own sake
— where (for example) the audiences are invited
to “groove” on bloody nauseating close-ups and
sadistic meaningless actions.

The Film Censorship Board does in a way ex-
ert a degree of both quantitative and qualitative
control over films. Quantitative control in the
sense that 3 per cent of films were rejected and
21 per cent were restricted (1975); qualitative
control in as much as the overwhelmingly ma-
jority of those rejected were[...]KMUOF
TELEVISION FILMS

We classify, on behalf of the Australian
Broadcasting Control Board, all import[...]and Australian TV films which are not
made under the auspices of a TV station.

The criteria and standards which we apply are
those as set out in the Australian Broadcasting
Control Board Television[...]ated very briefly since their
content lies within the province of the Control
Board.

The classifications are:

@ May be televised at any[...]rds TV
material.

1. There is a greater awareness in the com-
munity of the possible effects on children of a
constant diet o[...]. This had
led to a demand for a tightening up on the
standards relating to violence in early evening
programs.

2. The general acceptance of a more permissive
cinema (and the introduction of the “R” cer-
tificate) has filtered down and influenced
what the community considers acceptable in
a later time slot — i.e. the “A0” classifica-
tion. This has resulted in the passing for TV
— (after 8.30 p.m.) of “Modifi[...]hat “R” cer-
tificate films cannot be shown in toto on TV.
“Modified R” films would possibly receive a
theatrical “M” classification in their
reduced form.

Our Board and the Broadcasting Control
Board have agreed in principle that an extra
classification — a late[...]ts to implement this idea
have been frustrated by the commercial TV sta-
tions, whose over-riding concern, it would ap-
pear, is only for the dollar. Obviously there are
some films which are “not suitable for TV” un-
der the provisions of the’ standards as they now
exist.

TRENDS

To put the Australian scene into some world-
wide perspective:
(2) Overseas

BRITAIN The British Board of Film
Censors is an industrv-appointed body.
Films may be shown in Britain without a
BBFC certificate, at the discretion of the
local councils.

The BBFC’s reports and decisions
emphasize the need for the protection of
children and they continually refer back to
the “community standards” concept when
attempting to define “indecency”. On the
whole they are stricter in their classifications
than we are, and order many more cuts in
films in areas of sex and violence, nudity and
language.

A recent report issued by the British
Board of Film Censors expresses the opinion
that the great advantage of the British
system is its responsiveness to public opi-
nion, which, in the absence of a Bill of
Rights, is, it hopes, the best guarantee that
freedom of expression will be balanced
against social responsibility.

NEW ZEALAND The Board is a
government body under the Department of
the Interior. Information received from this
Board shows that films are heavily cut in
New Zealand often to meet the requirements
of a lower classification. Bad lang[...]films, regardless of classification,
(even from the most restricted).

U.S. There is no central censorship
authority. As in Britain, the Motion Pictures
Association of America ratings ar[...]phy. These films are con-
stantly bein challenged in the courts, with
very inconc usive results. Deep Thro[...]ad about 60 prosecutions
against it for obscenity in different parts of

the U.S. — some of them successful.

FRANCE Censorship, per se, was
abolished in 1975, but in its inimitable way,
the French government has made porn
almost too hot to[...]AND ITALY Very restrictive;

full frontal nudity in Spain is taboo._In Italy,
although hard-core porn magazines are
flourishing underground, “licentious
hedonism” in films has been banned official-
l .
y JAPAN Appears curiously ambivalent in
its attitude towards pornography. I under-
stand they employ children to brush out of-
fending genitals in publications. No pubic
hair or sex organs are permitted to be shown
in films, in spite of Japan’s long tradition of
erotica. Jap[...]ugh it can be found
under wraps.

INDIA Following the more restrictive
political regime, there has been a drive
towards discipline in other areas.

In May, 1976 the Censor Board told
producers that scenes of violence and drink-
ing would not be allowed in future films.
(They had already rapped films which ex-
ploited sex).

SCANDINAVIA No censorship for
adults in Denmark. Violence is censored in
Sweden, and they have a 15 years old plus
restric[...]ce are censored.

(b) Australia.

When looking at the Australian scene, it is
interesting to first examine trends (as
evidenced by a statistical analysis) from the
erfid of 51971 and beginning of 1972 to the end
0 197 .

STATISTICAL TRENDS

1. Theatrical films:

(a) Overall increase in 35mm features from
649 in 1972 to 916 in 1975, (increase of4l
per cent). At that rate of increase by 1978
the Board will be examining 1292.35mm
feature films annually.

The major supplier of feature films has

been the U.S. with a steady 27 per cent of

the total films examined in each of the
past four years. The most significant
changes have been the steady decrease in

British films from 16.3 per cent of the

total examined in 1972 to 8.73 per cent in

1975.

The Hong Kong “chop-socky” films
reached a peak of about 9 per cent of the
market in 1973 and 1974 and dropped
back to slightly over 6 per cent in 1975.

The other trend has been the gradual in-
crease in the proportion of West German
and French “soft core” glossies over the
period (France 4 per cent to 61/2 per cent
and West Germany 3 per cent to 6 per
cent).

The number of Australian films (18 —-
35mm, 19 — 16mm) increased in 1975,
whereas in 1974 there were only 10 -
35mm and 5 — 16mm films.

(c) The classification of theatrical features
have remained relatively stable over the
past three years.

InThe
remainder received a special condition
(su[...]

When the Corporation was
founded, Gil Brealey employed me
as film producer — in fact the first
film producer at the Corporation.
We worked with a very small staff
for the first six months, then John
Morris joined us —[...]t departments basically.

When Richard Smith, who was
head of distribution, left to go back
to Canada, Gil spoke to me about
the possibility of taking over what
was to be re-formed into the
marketing section. Previously it
had been distribution, which also
handled the non-commercial side
through the library. He decided,
wisely I think, to split off the
library as a separate entity — the
State Film Library — and keep the
marketing side wholly involved
with the commercial area.

It was a very hard decision for
me to make because I worked very
happily under John Morris who had
been made head of production. It
was a very exciting 18 months and I
learned a tremend[...], I decided to give it a go.

Quite a change from what you had
been doing . . .

I suppose, although a lot of things I
have done previously_in film-
making have been either ad-

\\\\

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s

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g .

Jill Robb is head of the South Australian Film Corporation’s
marketing division and a part-time member of the Australian
Film Commission. Initially trained in public relations in
London, she migrated to Australia in 1952 to become involved
in retail promotion. Between 1954 and 1962 she ran h[...]live television
programs for local stations. Over the next 10 years she moved
further into film and tel[...]ncluding,
“They’re :1 Weird Mob”, “Across the Top”, “Contrabandits”

and “Skippy”. In this interview, Jill Robb talks to Terry Plane

about her work at the SAFC.

ministrative, or on the business
side.

How does the marketing division
operate?

The marketing division handles all
product, 16mm and 35mm, unless
there is some film to which we don’t
have the distribution rights. We
market all our films now so we are
involved in selling 16mm prints
theatrically (including placi[...]stems.

I think we have been amazingly
successful in the 16mm field, when
you bear in mind that all our films
are sponsored. That is, they are not
documentaries in the true sense of
the word; they are films made for
government departm[...]lleges to teach people to
weld; a film depicting the history of
a local area.

So they are not films[...]have been remarkably successful -
certainly here in Australia — and
we are just starting to develop the
overseas market.

In marketing, we work very
closely with production, in the sense
that production comes to me and
we discuss the sort of properties
and projects they are developi[...]t’s
local and international appeal, and
whether the budget is going to
mean that we have no chance of
getting our money back in
Australia.

So you begin your involvement at

quite an early stage in a project’s
development . . .

Yes. I find it one of the most ex-
citing aspects of this job. I also
work closely with the head of
production in actually putting the
deal together — the investment deal
— so we can approach potential in-
vestors for money and sell the
corporation’s services and high
standards.

How[...]ou exploit them?

I think it starts way back with the
script. First, the market has to be
isolated: will the appeal only be
local, or international? Obviously if
it only has appeal within Australia,
then the budget'has to have a low
dealing. It would be nic[...]has international potential,
then probably one of the safest
ways to safeguard the investors‘
money is to go after up-front in-
volvement. That is, involve a big
distributor who has sufficient con-
fidence in the script to give us one-
third or a half of the budget in
return for rights to a certain
territory.

How did you approach the
marketing of “Sunday Too Far
Away” and[...]

We decided to handle it ourselves
here in Adelaide, and entered into a
general distribution deal for the rest
of Australia with Roadshow. Both
situations[...]y gave us very good
outlets and took it back into the
centre of Sydney following an in-
itial run in the suburbs where it had
built a word of mouth reputa[...]ng and
exhibiting it ourselves here, which
for me was an extraordinarily
valuable experience. As you may
know it ran nearly seven months in
Adelaide.

We then took it to the Cannes
Film Festival last year and it was
entered in the Directors’ Fortnight.
We offered it in all markets at Can-
nes and achieved a number of[...]any, and we are
negotiating with Austria, Poland,
the Soviet Union, Canada and
South Africa.

Unfortunately no major
American distributor was in-
terested in handling the film,

210 — Cinema Papers, January

although Paramount was quite ex-
cited when they saw it at Cannes.
They[...]e debate about it.

But they eventually felt that the
film was too ethnic. And I think
that’s a fair comment.[...]istributed here through a major
distributor.

And what about “Picnic at Hanging
Rock”?

Now with Pic[...]ucers —co-executive producers
—— and one of the investors. One of
the other investors, GUO Film
Distributors, have the Australian
distribution rights. That was all
pre-arranged.

As far as the overseas distribu-
tion rights go the producers, Picnic
Productions, have the negotiating
rights for all overseas deals,
providing they confer with the three
investors. So the South Australian
Film Corporation to that degree[...]hen deals are put to us, we
work very closely — the producers,
the Film Corporation, the Film
Commission and GUO — because
we believe‘[...]r of international dis-
tributors who want to see the film.

Interestingly enough people
overseas know about Picnic. I am
getting letters from around the

world asking what’s happened
about overseas distribution rights.
They are not necessarily the major
distributors, but the word is out
about the film.

As a government agency, the SAFC
must be free from pressures to
guarantee returns on their invest-
ments. When you involve private in-
vestors, do you encounter any con-
flict of inte[...]— state govern-
ment funds. This hasn’t been the
case in any of the feature films we
have made and I hope it won’t be in
the future.

The corporation is supposed to
create an industry her[...]t private money. It’s
not going to be funded by the state
government on a loan basis forever.
If you[...]absolutely
essential.

If we can’t get anybody in-
terested in investing in a particular
film, I think the corporation has to
look very carefully at its rea[...]ise it would
simply mean that nobody bothered.
At the moment the Corporation is
pursuing a very active policy to go
out and get investors interested in
investing in South Australian film.

Has anything ever been s[...]t right for us to make for one
reason or another. The inter-
national ratio is about nine projects
failing somewhere along the line,
while one goes forward into produc-
tion.[...]e have a tremendous
number of properties that are in
developmental stages.

I have observed that the SAFC is
very much a team process —
something which is not obvious from
the outside ..

I think it ought to be a team effort.
It’s got to be, and I would suggest
that major producers in the U.S.
and Britain should work the same
way.

I S<>ms~ »v::r<~i _
new; $4‘; saw)";

%///n I‘: if

We buy the rights to a book, we
give the writer a contract to develop
a script to first draft, in consulta-
tion with the producer who advises
to, say, play down the sex, or build
up the action — or whatever he
wants.

The first draft might not fulfil
what the producer wants. If the
communication doesn’t seem to be
happening, then we would take that
first draft, finish the contract with
that first writer and develop it with
another writer.

But that doesn’t happen very
often. What happens more fre-
quently is that a script will b[...]ed stage, and depending on
whether you agree with the princi-
ple of script editing, professional
scrip[...]to
believe that it’s absolutely vital —
then the script will be edited, usual-
ly in conjunction with the writer.

Do you think this kind of multi-
faceted[...]ake each
individual feature. Sunday Too_ Far
Away was conceived and written
from first to final draft by one
writer. Then he and the director
worked on the final shooting script.

But there are always dis[...]writers and direc-
tors — this scene should be in, that

‘I (fi,7[//.//y //(Q[...]t’s two creative
people. Picnic at Hanging Rock was
written from start to finish by Cliff
Green, so that’s a one-man job.

The work here appears very much
geared towards commer[...]s . . .

I would argue with that. If you had
seen the original scripts of Sunday
Too Far Away and Picni[...]have
agreed with a number of people -
including, in the case of Sunday, the
old AFDC — that they were totally
non-commercial ideas. You
wouldn’t have said they had any of
the accepted commercial in-
gredients, such as sex or violence.
I think the greatest single Cor-
poration achievement has been that
we, of all people, have been able to
prove that the Australian public not
only wants, but accepts and will go
in droves to films that have artistic
integrity —[...]Are you working on any projects for
television at the moment?

We have developed two ideas for
televisi[...]ym. I took a pilot episode
overseas last year and was amazed

at how many territories were in-
terested in it. They said, particular-
ly the Scandinavian countries, here
at last is a program for the 12 to 18
age group that is talking about
children’s problems from a
children’s point of view in a realistic
fashion. It’s not all cops and rob-
bers where Skippy comes to the
rescue.

Then there is an idea we are
developing around the German set-
tlers in the Barossa Valley up to
and during World War I, in which
we are hopeful of getting German
interest. We are also selling The
Fourth Wish, our latest feature
film. There is al[...]ng
work still to be done on Sunday Too
Far Away.

In establishing the SAFC, the South
Australian government obviously
hopes to es[...]de as a
filmmaking centre. Do you see
Adelaide as the future Hollywood of
the Australian film industry?

Anything is possible. I believe we
have many of the ingredients to do
just that. We have diversity of[...]excellent filming weather . . .

Without question the Film Cor-
poration and the whole arts scene
here are attracting more and more
people into the state and back to
the state. A creative industry really
feeds off itself and even in the three
years I have been here the whole
feel of Adelaide has been changing.
Without the government’s vision to

create the South Australian Film
Corporation there would be no

more activity here than there is in
Perth.

If we could turn finally to your posi-
tion with the AFC. What precisely is
your function there? Does it conflict
with your work here?

No, I don’t think so. I think the
part-time commissioners were
picked because they had specialist
knowledge in one or other areas.
Tony Buckley and I are probably
the only two of all the full-time and
part-time commissioners who are
ful[...]a day-to-day
basis.

I think they probably picked the
two of us because we had direct dai-
ly contact with a fairly wide cross
section of the film industry on a
working level. Frank Gardiner,
who is the other part-time com-
missioner, is a barrister and is in-
volved directly in exhibition;
Graham Burke, the other, is
managing director of a big distribu-
tion company which has links in
film production.

I believe I am on the AFC
because I am a working member of
the film industry at a grass roots
level. I don’: see the two functions
conflicting. I don’t feel I would have
been asked to serve on the Commis-
sion if in fact I wasn’t involved in
the industry — directly involved in
the industry. at

Cinema Papers, January — 211

The broadest aim of the Producers and Direc-
tors’ Guild of Australia s[...]ntertain-
ment is big business — let’s invest in it,” held
during the weekend of October 30-31 in Sydney,
was to provide greater communal awareness
among film,[...]atre producers,
writers, directors and actors, of the need for in-
creased industry unity. It is timely, considering
the fact that all three media are undergoing
great change.

For the film people, discussion most often
concerned itself with attracting investment,
either with or without the AFC, and building on
the beginning of an international market. For
those on television, it was a question of improv-
ing quality for local consumption and export.
And for the theatre people, key points of con-
cern were new[...]while allowing more scope for Australian
drama.

The brainchild of PDGA treasurer Maureen
Walsh and the president, Kip Porteous,
“Entertainment is big business” is the latest
move in the organization's increasingly active
campaign for industry reform over the last
decade. Ten years ago the Guild was restruc-
tured as a company limited by guarantee, and
whatever traces of elitism that survive the pre-
1966 days have now been significantly reduced.
From the mid-60s, the PDGA has drawn its
membership from a broad spectr[...]n producers, industry union and
craft guilds, and the investment sector. Any sug-
gestion that the PDGA be re-formed as a union
has been resisted.

Many of the basic industry ills revealed at the
seminar dated from at least as far back as the
never-enforced film and television industry’s
Vincent Report* of 1962-3. In fact the
familiarity of many of the bugbears gave rise to
one of the seminar’s resolutions, calling as it did
for the present Federal government to debate the
Vincent Report which more than a decade
before had been tabled, then conveniently
shelved by the Menzies government.

Shortly after the shelving, the PDGA
organized a three-day seminar attended by a[...]evision industry, political and community
groups. The sole resolution of that seminar (held
in Easter 1963) was to demand that the House of
Representatives debate the report.

In spite of the seminar’s attendance by
groups as disparate as the Liberal and Labor
parties, the Catholic church, the Waterside
Workers’ Federation, the Country Women’s As-
sociation, and such notables as Albert Monk,

* The Report of the Senate Select Committee on the En-
couragement of Australian Production for Television.

‘Etertainet is
Big BIISIIIBSS’
THE PDGA SEMINAR 1976

Prof. Alan Stout, Morris West, Frank Hardy,
Jim Cairns and Ted St. John, the call went un-
heeded by the press and the parliamentarians
that mattered.

The report contained provision for many aids
in the form of loans, quotas, tax relief and other
incen[...]ate October weekend) were still being
demanded at the recent seminar. Many of the
old arguments were given a new veneer bv the
cautious semi-euphoria of the recent success in
feature films.

Writing in Quadrant, in December 1969,
Sylvia Lawson said: “In other countries
locally-oriented film comment is about actual

films; here it is about the industry, or rather the
non-industry.” At the “Entertainment”

seminar, the discussion was not only with titles,
but with such questions as national identity in
film, which, it should be pointed out, were on
le[...]ghts turned toward
commercial television. Many of the senior
producers spoke persuasively in support of com-
pelling overseas distributor/exhi[...]e
younger and apparently more confident said that
the last decade’s weakening of overseas interests
m[...]lity far less relevant and
worthwhile. Mention of the need for subsidy
rose frequently, as it always had during detailed
submissions on the film industry’s future. And
interestingly, the demand for television quota
legislation ignored the quantity points system in
favor of a unanimous call for investment quotas.

Most speakers on television were at a loss
when the discussion focused on the use of
national elements and export marketing. Re[...]lian television provided
fewer opportunities than the feature film area
for personal expression, they implied that
national identity in programs for export could at
best be synthetic or diluted enough to be almost
non-existent.

The seminar’s more specific aim then was to
discover ways in which the entertainment in-
dustry could integrate more closely to attract in-
vestment from the private sector. Discussion of
artistic form was limited to its worth as a com-
mercial prospect, with increased quality being
urged, particularly in the area oftelevision. The
importance of unity between film, television and
theatre was also discussed with the future
prospect of politicizing industry requirem[...]aid television and
film’s present fragmentation in these areas could
stunt the growth of both industries.

One immediate object was for the seminar to
provide a direct industry proposal to the
Minister Assisting the Prime Minister in the
Arts, Tony Staley, who officially opened

proceedings at a Friday night cocktail. arty.
The seminar was also expected to provi e the
PDGA with guidelines for action. In this regard,
the most significant resolution called for the run-
ning of a follow-up seminar in about six months.
The second seminar, which is intended to lure
Austral[...]e to operate quite effectively if it makes use of
the greater awareness which emerged at the first.
During the recent seminar, five panels
presented and sometimes found themselves
debating the extent of their knowledge in the
areas of film and television cost increases, in-
vestment incentive, film and television exports,
Australian television quotas, and the (predicted)
future of Australian theatre. Not eve[...]strictly to his or her allocated subject. So,
for the purposes of identifying more clearly the
leading issues, I have condensed and divided the
content of dialogue into seven major areas. The
submissions that emerged appear at the end.

COST INCREASES
‘ARE WE PRICING OURSELVES
OUT OF THE BUSINESS’

Chair: Ric Birch

Panel: Charles Wol[...]arry Group of Companies
Roger Miramslndependent T.V. and Film Producer

FILM AND TELEVISION AS INVESTMENT
‘INVESTMENT INCENTIVES
FOR -THE BUSINESSMAN’

Chair: Michael Robertson
Panel: T[...]ate investment

Quoting film and television as “the toughest
business in the world,” Charles Wolnizer said
many businessmen, such as himself, would be at-
tracted to invest in production if guaranteed a
percentage of a[...]

cent of the net as 50 per cent of nothing.

Harry Miller, hav[...]daptation of
Patrick White’s Voss, said most of the world’s
businessmen were reluctant to invest in film
because the industry lacked the required degree
of business initiative and know-h[...]iness, speaking as part of a later panel,
said he was impressed at the business capability
of Australian producers, some of whom outshine
their counterparts in more conventional under-
takings, He said: “To be able to perform well in
business and the arts is unusual and rare.”

Robert Kirby warned[...]triving for too much too soon,
while stating that the confidence of Hexagon’s
investors could always be engendered by the
presence of the AFC as a partner. Kirby said
that Hexagon, in a package sale of six of the
company’s features, had returned investors 150[...]Many voices of concern and caution were
raised on the first two topics. Members of later
panels accused the early speakers of inducing
too much gloom, with Paddy McGuiness in par-
ticular referring to the “old whingeing approach
which characterizes Aus[...]rs nor public could be made any
more receptive by the entertainment industry’s
tales of domestic woe. But any mention of cost
and investment in a seminar such as this would
have been unrealistic without some indication of
the pitfalls.

The general consensus on cost was that
producers, during the past three years, have been
spending ever-increasing amounts of money,
with the result of decreasing nett returns.
Charles Wolniz[...]stralian
production costs were now equal to those in
other countries. John Barry gave some indica-
tion of the shape of things to come by stating
that the hire of film production equipment was
now [5 per cent higher than it was in the U.S.,
Britain, and Europe.

Speaking from a laboratory viewpoint, Doug
Dove said that inflation boosted costs and prices
at the rate of 30 per cent per annum. About 55 per
cent of the lab’s annual revenue would normally
be ploughed[...]iters
were anything but pricing themselves out of the
business, and a significant number were still be[...]ment without
guarantee of eventual payment.

(ii) The role of government.

The panel generally agreed that the profit-
sharing relationship between the AFC and
producers was far from ideal. Torn Stacey
(former head of the now defunct Australian Film
Development Corporation) said subsidy rather
than direct investment from the Commission
would be a more effective way of attracting in-
vestment. Harry Miller said the AFC’s share of
75 per cent of a film’s nett[...]d film producers were being “squeezed up” by
the AFC’s percentage demand, and that poten-
tially even the strongest were not being given the
chance they needed to survive and help develop
the industry. Taking the opposite stance to
Robert Kirby, when it came to the AFC and
private investment, Miller said the Commission
at the moment could do little to attract the
private investor.

John Daniell said recent AFC i[...]estors, and that while he admitted
limitations to the producer from the Commis-
sion’s profit split, the AFC was willing to re-
negotiate the percentage if the producer could
prove that other agreements were l[...]normal share of 25 per
cent.

Speaking as part of the next panel, Paul
Landa (representing the NSW Premier, Mr.
Neville Wran, as government spokesman on the
NSW Interim Film Commission) said, the NSW
government would ado t an ‘angel’ and
marketing role in the production of film. This
will include their full[...]essary, on films made
without government money.

The Government hopes the proposed corpora-
tion will sidestep, as much as[...]ed or
otherwise “i1l-advised,” and feels that the
overseas marketing of Australian films is essen-[...]ent Producer
Hal McElroy . . . . . . . . . . . .. In endent Producer
Mende Brown . . . . . . . . . . .[...]rought a far more optimistic outlook than that
of the earlier panels. One presumes this is
because the potential for overseas marketing of
Australian output has, on the surface at least,
seemed frequently more assured than the raising
of capital. Yet, as stated earlier, feature film
producers now seem more assured of the inter-
national marketing formula than those in televi-
sion.

As an independent producer, predominantly
for television, Roger Mirams told the seminar
that the US. market “doesn’t want to know
about anything they don’t produce themselves”;
and was contradicted inin the U.S., or in any other country with a
similar demand.

Quoting the international acceptance of his
company’s Skippy series, Robinson said the
producer aiming for success overseas should
think[...]and television producer Mende Brown claimed
that the future of international marketing was in
the employment of “honorable agents” who
negotiated the best terms within prescribed ter-
ritories.

Reviving comment on national identity in
film, Paddy McGuiness said, after initial indif-[...]diences were now willing to accept
sophistication in national self-consciousness
through films like Picnic At Hanging Rock and
Caddie. Placed in its historical context, Alvin
Purple is seen by M[...]o
impose Australian overtones on top of a bid for
the soft porn market; but neither had it been
“good porn, nor was it Australian, in spite ofthe
accents".

Caddie, in McGuiness’ opinion, has been the
first local film to give audiences an Australia[...]ch is both normal and universally
comprehensible. The film’s other appeal, he

From left: John Barry, Managing Director of the John ‘Barry Group of Companies; Harry Mi[...]

said, was in its dealing with eternal problems in
an urban environment.

AUSTRALIAN CONTENT
FILM, TELEVISION AND THEATRE

(The remainder of this report now departs from the order
of subject prescribed by the seminar, and has been split into
headings that best serve the leading issues that emerged.
Because this report takes a film and television standpoint,
not all the theatre statements have been included.)

The remaining panelists were as follows:

Milton Wats[...]Australian
film quota have on many occasions been the
springboard for producers’ lobbying. surprising-
ly little was aired on the issue.

Two speakers in favor based their suggestions
on the assumption that only with the assistance
of quota legislation could Australian[...]nal film
output.

Discussion of television quotas was far better
served. Most speakers, whether projecting refor-
mist or establishment viewpoints, favored the
setting up of an investment quota whose quality
requirements would provide for the expenditure
of more time and care inthe
most part been frustrated by the lack of courage
and fresh initiative at commercial management
levels.

Much of the talk on Australian theatre
revolved around the need for Australian theatre
to shed its ‘Great[...]so often
characteristic of attempts to re-create the days
of mass audience appeal.The need for closer
links between modern commercial and spon-
sored theatre was stressed, and also for commer-
cial managements to be taking a more positive
approach on the staging of Australian plays.

But back to televis[...]television variety programs, proved to be one of

the seminar’s more concerned and highly critical
sp[...]s that Australian content is of
little importance in the current scheme of opera-
tions, for the stations’ advertising revenue has
been fully pa[...]g and educational, and this
could strongly redeem the values of a public
gluttonously over-fed on American “fantasy”.

Julie James-Bailey spoke in favor of an invest-
ment quota when she revealed that the commer-
cial channels’ total collective revenue from
television commercials in 1971 was about $151
million, and that by the end of this year the
figure would have risen by a further $50 million.
Comparing these figures with the AFC’s $1 mil-
lion investment budget for the current year, she
said commercial television networks had ample
scope to spend both more time and money in up-
grading local content.

James Malone, spokesman for the Federation
of Australian Commercial Television St[...]t-
ment quota, and that hopefully it would enable
the emergence of more experimentation and
programming[...]more authentic local tradition would result from
the greater time taken in preparing and produc-
ing programs, though the importance of quality
would far outweigh any over[...]alian elements. Malone said he
had yet to know “what an ‘Australian’ program
is”.

The need for an increased local output of
educational films was stressed by Ian Cochrane,
former director of production at the Videotape
Corporation and now teacher of advertising at
the Sydney Technical College. Cochrane said
the film and television industry — PDGA in par-
ticular — should educate the educators to think
more in terms of the value of local content. He
said that out of 3000 title entries in an
educational film catalogue currently circulat[...]in.

Speaking for J .C. Williamson’s theatrical in-
terests, Paul Riomfalvy,saidthe revamped JCW
were interested in Australian content, not for
purely patriotic, but[...]mplement a growing commitment to local
drama with the promotion of a stronger
Australian ‘star’ tradition.

Organizers of the “Entertainment is Big Business” Seminar, PDGA[...]Nimrod Theatre producer Ken Horler
criticized the Australian commercial theatre’s
neglect to date[...]could be
read both as commercial theatres cashing-in on
an area which for a long time only subsidized
theatre had the courage to embrace, and as part
of the overall closer proximity between the aims
and activity of the commercial and subsidized
companies. (A while later, Prof. Robert
Quenton said: “Nobody used the term ‘commer-
cial theatre’ until it started getting into trouble.
Before that it was just ‘theatre’.”)

Horler said he was unable to understand why
Australian film and television interests were not
making increased use of at least the 12 good
local writers capable of achieving success in
theatre.

INDUSTRY UNITY

Horler’s comment was not the seminar’s first
call for closer unity between f[...]nd
theatrical production interests. Most comments
in this direction were aimed at closer bonding
within film and television, and here it was felt
that PDGA might play a vital role.

Early in the seminar, Harry Miller said that
when it came to n[...]d television production
interests were fragmented in a way rarely evi-

dent in theatre. In the face of the needs of invest-
ment attraction and increasing u[...]ion of this aloof stance
would not augur well for the industry’s future.

Milton Watson, as part of h[...]s
more senior members to advise junior members
on the viability of script concepts and packaging;
while[...]made several sugges-
tions to rovide an answer to the television in-
dustry’s ack of a “long view”.

Television, she said, needed much broader in-
put from allied fields of entertainment, and the
television medium itself should serve a greater
a[...]with those of film and theatre. Once
again, PDGA was encouraged to play a domi-
nant role in the unification, and the ultimate
result might be a stronger political base for the
entertainment industry.

TAXATION

(i) Profit concessions: Most opinions were
against tax concessions for the filmmaker,
generally on the assumption that it was either an
insignificant, or at best temporary, cure to the
industry’s foreseeable financial problems, or that
the prospect of explaining the uniqueness of the
film industry’s requirements to taxation
authorities was more trouble than it was worth.
Paddy McGuiness said there were strong arg[...]ns, but they would
have to be specially viewed by the authorities in
the context of film. John Daniell of the AFC
reported that a film industry submission on the
tax question was being prepared for the con-
sideration of the Myer committee in Canberra.
(ii) Cinema admissions: At least three of the
speakers who advised tampering with income
taxation were still in favor of a tax on cinema
admissions which could subsequently be fed as
subsidy to production in much the same way that
Eady Money is dispensed in Britain.

Continued on P. 284

in the
Black liar’

“There is a lesson for Australia[...]ts working
inexpensively making films, which for the most part won’t have
any world-wide names. Then you can recoup in the home

country and still hope for the big break internationally.”

How did[...]that
someone with your background
became involved in the very early
days of television?

Well, in the air force, during World
War 2, I met a young fell[...]en and I helped him
put on some soldier shows. He was
very visionary about television even
in those early days.

Anyway, when I took my Law
degree in 1948 I worked for him in
Los Angeles for no money; at the
same time as I was working in a law
office. Finally, in 1950, we
managed to sell National Broad-
casting Corporation the first filmed
television series. Those were the
days of the live shows, like P/zilco
Playhouse; till then not[...]-minute film, and we did it by
working non-union. The unions
were in the more established fields
of radio and television, and in
theatrical films, but television film
was still a no-man’s land. So we
managed to make th[...]Samuel Z. Arkoff is president ‘and chairman of the board of
American International Pictures, the highly successful
production-distribution company founded by him and the late
James H. Nicholson in 1954. Over the past 22 years he has
been responsible for the introduction of a host of new crazes
into the film industry — from teen musicals to horror, b[...]ted a big sales
drive of AIP releases. To top off the celebrations, Arkoff made
his first trip to Australia, where in Melbourne he spoke with
Cinema Papers contributin[...]Ginnane.

spend, you learn to be a producer.

At the same time, as a struggling
lawyer I was representing probably
every young, aspiring producer that
was around, and I would take
points in their productions in lieu of
fees. In 1952, I had a client who
contended that Jack Brouthers, a
fellow who was handling reissues,
had stolen a title. Now really[...]ound to stand on. Jack brought
out his title-man, the fellow who did

all their advertising, and it turned
out to be Jim Nicholson.

Jim had been in exhibition for
years. Through illness he had lost
the four theatres he owned, so he
was back temporarily with Jack
Brouthers. Jim swore that he had
thought of the title independently,
but Jack wrote out a $500 settle-
ment cheque anyway, which was
pretty amazing, because Jack was a
known skinflint.

After that Jim and I became very
friendly and in 1954 we decided that
the time was ripe to set up an in-

dependent distribution company.
We called it American Releasing
Corporation and a year later
changed the name to American
International Pictures. We had no
offices, so we used states righters‘
and so-called franchise holders.’
W[...]films.

How did you meet Corman?

I first met him in 1953. We were
aware that he had made a little film
called Monster from the Ocean
Floor for about $20,000, and we
knew he was dissatisfied with the
way his distributor had handled it.
So we approac[...]r around,
got some advances from our

1. Since the 1950s small American indepen-
dent distributors and producers have used
individual distributors —— states righters
—— to operate for them in certain States,
thereby saving costs on expensive branch[...]

216 — Cinema Papers, January

Peter Fonda (centre) in The Wild Angels.

franchise holders, and were off. I[...]selves. So, by a com-
bination of financing from the
laboratories, advances from
franchise holders, an[...]months we realized that since
we had no strength in the market
place we cou1dn’t afford to rely on
films that only cost $100,000 to
make — and that was in color!

We were only going to get shot
down into the second feature
bracket and get the low end of the
flat price scale. So we resolved to
make two films of a similar type,
put them together in a combina-
tion, and hell and high water not
split them till we got the whole bill.
That’s what we did.

The first one we made for a com-
bination was The Day the World
Ended, but we didn’t have enough

Publicity graphic for A Small Town in
Texas.

money at that time to make a se-
cond one[...]couple of
editors who had some investors to
make The Phantom from 10,000
Leagues and we put those two
together.

What was the shooting schedule on a
film like that?

Two weeks. In those days a week
was six days. Jim and I each had a
certain function: he was the guy in
the white car and I was the guy in
the black car. Jim would stay on the
set and I would keep right away,
until by about the 11th day the
word would come that we were run-
ning behind and were going to be
over budget and over time. That
was when I would make my black-
car entry. I would call for the writer
and the director and I would say,
okay gentlemen, now we have to
cut a certain number of pages out of
the script. I realize that it stamps
me irrevocably as a philistine, but
that was one way we brought them
in, and I would say without excep-
tion that on dozens of films we
didn’t go over.

We also disproved the belief that

only big films could make it, and
we did with what you could call ex-
ploitation films, where you di[...]Jack Nicholson started with
us and must have been in 10 or a
dozen of ours; we had Bruce Dern,
Touch Connors, Charlie Bronson

— but in those days nobody knew
who they were.

Our scripts were all originals: my
brother-in-law must have written 40
of them. We also had a very good,

tightly-knit_ unit. I think that was the
secret of it, and I would suggest

that there is[...]its working
inexpensively making films, which
for the most part won’t have any
world-wide names. Then you can
recoup in the home country and still

hope for the big break inter-
nationally.

In the early sixties AIP started
handling importations . . .

Actually, the change came in 1958.
We had taken over the master lease
on the old Charlie Chaplin studio.

In 1958 we made 22 films in Hol-
lywood, which means 11 combina-
tions, and by this time we began to
think that we had found the golden
formula. Except for our beginning
films like Apache Woman (which
was still recouping) we hadn’t lost
any money on any film — which, as
you know, defies the law of gravity,
among other things. So by ’58 other
independents had plunged in and
were making the same type of
films. We had made classics like I
was a Teenage Frankenstein, which
starred Michael Landon of
Bonanza in his first film, and so on.
But by the summer of 1958 the bot-
tom dropped out: there were too
many films[...]type.

So by early ’59 we managed to
get rid of the studio lease, because
no sooner did we move into that
studio than there was a studio
strike. Along came Red Skelton,
who wanted to buy that lot. We
didn’t own it, we only had the
master lease, but he bailed us out
(and damn near bailed himself in).

Jim and I headed off to Italy,
because Joseph E. Levine, our
franchise holder in Boston, was
about to sign Hercules. We had

heard about these[...]d we bought
two, one of them finished and called
The Sign of Rome, starring Anita
Ekberg.

I discovered from reading some
history, that in the later days of the
Roman empire, when the Romans’
brains and brawn were getting a lit—[...]y carnivals,
they used to fete slaves who had
won in the arena. So it became Sign
of the Gladiator, although we didn’t
have a gladiator in the whole film.
In the dubbing we managed to es-
tablish this one partic[...]adiator who, if he lost,
would find himself back in the ring.

The other one that we picked up
was a Steve Reeves Hercules film.
But Joe was about to come out with
his Steve Reeves Hercules film, so
we renamed Hercules Goliath in the
dubbing and the film became
Goliath and the Barbarians.

Did you buy those films for the U.S.
and Canada, or with other world ter-
ritories in mind?

We bought them for about half the
world and then we gave them to
others to distribute. In Australia,

I was a Teenage Frankenstein, part of AIPs
horror line-up of the late 50s —— before the
bottom drop d out of the market and
Arkoff mov on to the “Sword and Sandal
Strongman” films.

we used MGM at one stage and
later, Paramount.

The big problem in this general
area was that most of those foreign
salesman still thought they were

royalty. You have to realize that
after the war Americans thought
they were the kings of the beasts.
Their attitude in foreign territories
was sometimes very arrogant and
the foreign departments of the so-
called major film companies
behaved in much the same way.

They failed to realize that the
youth rebellion had struck and that
the arrival of television had
changed the whole pattern of
cinema attendance: except for cer-
tain films, old people were for the
most part going to stay at home
and now young people were going to
make up the bulk of the theatre-
going audience. So they kept on
pushing those nice films like The
Vagabond King. They didn’t un-
derstand our fi[...]How did you get involved with
Roadshow?

Roadshow was the greatest thing
that ever happened to us in
Australia, because Rock Kirby un-
derstood the kind of films we were
making. He was bright and alert
and upcoming, and not just a paid
employee; he knew what was hap-
pening to the cinema audience,
which now consisted primarily of
people under 30 years of age. Link-
ing up with Roadshow was a mar-
riage of convenience: we had found
a new upgoing company with a
primarily drive-in base.

What sort of deal did you have with
Roadshow in the early days? Was it
based on a fixed sum per film or ad-
vance an[...]came to New
York, where our foreign depart-
ment was located at the time, and
he made a six-film deal for
something l[...]and had all been ban-
ned.

How did you move from the Italian
films, to the Poe films, to the beach
films and then on to the bike and
drug films? How did you pick the
trends? Was it market research?

In the first place I think there is a
lot of so-called r[...]solute malarkey. I think I am
basically a seat-of-the-pants man,
but that’s not quite as inexpert and[...]d. To
begin with I run at least six films a
week in my house; and when my
kids were growing up I would have,
depending on the film, 25 to 75 of
their friends there watching;
because no matter what anybody
says, no matter how young you
think you a[...]to
think you know it all.

Why did AIP go public in 1968, and
what effect did it have on you?

Well, I didn’t really want to go
public. AIP was in very good shape,
but we had given two long-term
e[...]ortunately
had to undergo a divorce settle-
ment. The biggest asset he had
was his AIP stock. So it was one of
those things. I am still the biggest
stockbroker by a tremendous
amount and go[...]it has
not made that much difference.

At around the same time that you
went public Jim Nichols[...]

Members of the Australian film industry exist
in a perpetual state of tension and, until recently,[...]sur-
prising really — becoming a film producer in
Australia is probably somewhat easier than buy-
ing a gun in the U.S. Every other day some
former used car salesman is announcing that he
has just about clinched the rights to Poor Fellow
My Country, and that Charles Bronson is so
keen to play the lead that he is taking English
lessons —- along with the producer.

And so the breed proliferates — another
group of people lo[...]so that a fourth group can
pretend to be held by the illusion. This fourth
group of people will have m[...]ares at a time
when audiences have decreased, but the
Australian success stories -— Picnic at Hanging
Rock, Caddie and The Devil’s Playground are
going through the roof.

Of these films, Mrs Fraser, Break of Day a[...]a film producer. His credits include:
Homesdale, The Office Picnic, Promised Woman, The
Adventures of Barry McKenzie (production manager), The
Great McCarthy (associate producer), The Removalists, The
Trespassers, Mad Dog Morgan (associate producer),[...]gambled on an overseas star name -
signal a shift in thinking towards considerably
larger budgets than Alvin Purple, The Adven-
tures of Barry McKenzie and Stone. And in 1977
this trend will continue with The Picture Show
Man, The Last Wave, Summerfield, The Mango
Tree and The Irishman.

It will be an unhappy situation if at least one
of the films at the other end of the financial
spectrum is not successful. The Australian in-
dustry has supported a number of ‘gentleman’[...]r failures have been
partially compensated within the Film Commis-
sion, at least by the successes of other films. This
is not going to be[...]dgets of
$500,000 and upwards. Nor will it signal the

death of the breed.
If a producer has theThe result may be Caddie, Sunday Too Far
Away, or The Devil’s Playground.

The fact that the candidate has spent 10 years
dodging writ servers in Darwin, or has an
overdeveloped taste for cucumbe[...]signal a hint that he is
not Martin Scorsese, but the field is small and
new faces have to be gambled on.

At the time of writing, Tim Burstall, Bruce
Beresford, T[...]ard
Smith, Mike Thornhill and Peter Weir comprise
the currently employed members of the industry

Peter Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris, one of the few venturesome Australian features.

218 — Cin[...]m, who is a former
ABC director, have backgrounds in low budget
filmmaking.

Since 1968 they have directed 22 features,
screened in 35mm; another 17 — local in origin
— have also appeared. Filmmaking is a
de[...]‘ few crew members over 40 current-
ly involved in production. This is due to the
demanding nature of the work and also faddism.

Grant Page earning his share of the profits in Brian
Trenchard Smith's Deathcheaters.

Au[...]to those used by John Ford and
Ingmar Bergman. At the end of a shoot it is not
uncommon to hear a producer say that he hopes
to have the same crew available for his next
production. Should the continuity of labor be as
high as one-third it wo[...]latively better disposed towards one another
than was the case two years ago, there is a
burgeoning discont[...]rs. This has been a by-product of
producer greed. The crew member is given no
genuine participation in the film and the
producer seeks to compensate for this with a
champagne slate at the end of the first week and
a blubbery end-of-shooting party. On
Deathcheaters, the producer-director Brian
Trenchard Smith spread 5 per cent of the
producer’s profit equally among the crew. Effec-
tively this gives them .25 per cent of the return
which, while not a large sum of money, is[...]ose involved.

A particularly damaging myth about the
Australian industry is that there is virtually only
one feature crew in Australia. I recently
returned from overseas one[...]with only
five of them. I wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect
of working with 17 people almost unknown to
me, but in the event it was a very rewarding ex-
perience.

Some of the most sought after crew members
in Australia are also the biggest pains in the arse
— complacent, sulky and paranoiacally afra[...]ho work less frequently,
because they are outside the club, or have just
not worked with producers or d[...]re con-
siderably more energetic, imaginative and in-
volved. The only totally baseless criticism of the

current proliferation of features is that there are
not enough technicians ca able of fulfilling the
demands put on them. T ere is a shortage of
compe[...]of
designers, but otherwise it is a cornucopia.

The advisability of using overseas stars as an
audien[...]obably un-
resolvable. I have seen a criticism of the selec-
tion of Dennis Hopper to play in Mad Dog
Morgan, but I don’t think it could be sustained;
not even the most virulently parochial critic has
suggested that the power of the film does not
derive substantially from his stra[...]performers were with Dennis Price and
Peter Cook in The Adventures of Barry McKen-
zie. Their fees were n[...]nt, but I did not
admire Cook’s performance and was annoyed
when many local critics preferred his wor[...]p
of that I don’t believe a large proportion of the
audience were aware of his identity.

Australian audiences seem to respond warmly
to the spectacle of local boys who have made
good. I have heard them react loudly and
favorabl to Spike Milligan in Bazza, Bud
Tingwel in Petersen and Nick Tait in Devil’s
Playground. For the same reasons I think the
casting of Ray Barrett in Don’s Party and Rod
Taylor in Picture Show Man are shrewd moves.
I doubt Dominic Guard’s performance in Picnic
at Hanging Rock increased its commercial
potential; and Jimmy Wang Yu, his lack of
charm in Man From Hong Kong is so relentless
that I have heard audiences scream for Grant
Page to kill him in their fight scene.

The real problem we face here is an unwil-
lingness to experiment. In the past few years I
think only Dalmas, Cars That Ate[...]il’s Playground have been really ven-
turesome. The first two were not commercially
successful, but they led the way to the critical suc-

Overseas star Dennis Hopper, a powerful element in Philippe
Mora’s Mad Dog Morgan.

cess of Pure Shit and the double success of Pic-
nic at Hanging Rock. The prevailing blind faith
that a genre — roughly d[...]” —
will hold an inexhaustible fascination to the
Australian public is as misguided as Holly-
wood’s convictions in the early 60s that what
the public wanted to see were epics.

Our production,[...]ne if you want to make
British—type films with the look of another era.
In part I would ascribe this to a producer failure
to involve the crew in the success of the final
product and his slavish desire to find su[...]nd
would need an eight-week shooting period to do
the film justice. There is no doubt that the
method worked for the film. But a Dillinger or a
Psycho, shot over a p[...]ive to a film — I suspect that a
great part of the energy of Pure Shit derives
from the fact that it was made in a hurry. By
March or April a 1977 direction will[...]elf. Producers will be engaging cast
and crews on the basis that this is “the big one”
— the first Australian film to succeed on an in-
ternational level (most of us have worked on at[...]en that happens I hope investors will recall
that the first such films from other countries
were modes[...]monds,
Rashomon, Memories of Underdevelopment and
The Cranes are Flying. Poland’s most expensive
film, The Pharaoh, Britain’s lavish Caesar and
Cleopatra, the Arabian film, Night of Counting
the Years and Cacayonnis’ Day the Fish Came
Out, simply illustrated that you could take the
film out of the country, but you could not take
the country out of the film. it

Cinema Papers, January — 219

Basil Gilbert

In recent years, the young Italian film direc-
tor, Bernardo Bertolucci, has been one of the
main targets of film censorship in Italy. In
January this year, his Last Tango in Paris was
declared obscene and the court ordered all
copies of the film in Italy to be “thrown to the
flames”. The judgement came after a delay of
four years; Last[...]rtolucci) first appeared to stunned
audiences at the New York Film Festival in
1972.

The judgement was based on fascist-era laws
that had originally bee[...]a hic
literature, but which were now being applie in-
creasingly against films. However, the court did
permit one copy of Last Tango to be stored in
the national film archives in Rome, for the pur-
poses of academic study.

The legal action did not stop with the se-
questration of the film. Bertolucci and his
producer, Alberto Grimaldi, as well as the prin-
cipal leads in the film — Marlon Brando and
Maria Schneider — w[...]ucci and Grimaldi also learned that they
had lost the right to vote at national elections in
Italy for the next 10 years.

The news of Bertolucci’s de-registration as a
voter — which meant one less vote for the com-
munists for 10 years — was preceded by even
more disturbing news. The first part of his new
historical epic 1900 had also been declared
obscene by a Salerno magistrate and was im-
mediately ordered off all screens throughout the

Basil Gilbert is a lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts,
University of Melbourne. He is currently in Italy on sab-
batical leave.

1900: Burt Lan[...]patriarchs.

Opposite: 1900, expressing "love for the class that will win
in the whole world, the working class”.

'.

country. It had been running for less than three
weeks, and only the day previously the second
half of the 5 hour 24 minute “colossal” (as they
call such films in Italy) had begun screenings at
alternative cinemas, The public flocked to see
the non-censored second half, fearing that it too
might be censored. To cope with the demand,
cities such as Rome and Milan ran it
simultaneously at three cinemas.

The first part of 1900, which in toto had cost
the massive sum of $6 million to produce, had
been banned by the magistrate. after a com-
plaint from a resident of that city. Professor
Borraro, who ran the provincial library of
Salerno, had seen the film in the company of his
wife and 17-year-old daughter, Argentina, and
they were shocked at what they saw. To them,
the most distressing scene in the film was an
episode which showed two men in bed with the
one woman.

Professor Borraro, who won a gold med[...]ontributions to “education, culture and
art”, was also shaken by a scene of Bof-type cun-
nilingus,[...]g schoolmistress is seated
on a basket of apples, in a barn that served as
headquarters for the countryside communist
“education faculty”; and finally, by a charming
naive sequence where the young squire of the
property stimulates his cousin Regina by the side
of an elm tree, making use of the co-efficient of
friction of the barrel of his old-fashioned
sporting rifle.

In Italy, the banning of a film can mean
economic disaster. Italians are still the worlds
most enthusiastic film buffs; even television
when it was introduced in Italy, did not have the
same decimating effect on cinemagoers as in
France and Germany.

According to British journalist Peter Nichols,
in the decade beginning in 1961, Italian cinemas
lost some 200 million patro[...]al-
ing from 741 million to 550 million — while in

STORMY

_ .

er BEGINNINGS

Germany during the same period there was a
drop from 517 million to 180 million, and in
France from 350 million to 190 million. So, with
the banning of 1900 after such a short run, it
seemed that Twentieth Century-Fox, the film’s
distributors in Italy, had backed a non-starter.

The day after the film was banned, the Italian
press — especially the socialist papers —— began
a campaign of retaliation. The news of the event
was front-page headlines in several papers. “An
incredible repressive and censorious interven-
tion”, declared L'Um'ta, the official national
daily of the Communist Party; “A Banning by
Incompetents”, complained Florence’s Paese
Sera in a double-column report; while the
moderate La Nazione ran the sober headlines
“1900 banned: Bertolucci Demoralised”.

Many of the reports included a short personal
statement by Bertolucci. It read (in part):

“Once upon a time, there was an Italian cinema with
images and sounds which were brought to life in the dark
ambience of the cinema through the re-creative imagina-
tion of the spectators .. . but a film is only a miserable
fr[...]be projected
and viewed.”

After commenting on the “physical and psy-
chological impossibility”[...]magistrates who cloak political
repression under the label of obscenity”, Ber-
tolucci added:

"I believe the only thing left for an Italian filmmaker is
the sad alternative of emigrating and working in a freer
country; as long as Mussolini continues to be present in
our life through the penal code.”

This concluding paragraph, although it may
have raised expectations in the hearts of some
Americans and Australians (who cou[...]an Italian when this state of af-
fairs can exist in Italy,” said a medical student
friend.

I

The sadistic fascist bully Attila (Donald Sutherland) is executed by the peasants after the

W3l'.

Cinema Papers, January — 221

The Italian trade unions also gave their sup-
port to[...]erous leading
writers, critics and intellectuals. The general
feeling was that a major political and social film
was being denied access to the screen, on the
pretext of being sexually offensive, at a time
wh[...]graphy and sadistic
violence.

This point of view was underlined by the fact
that Marco Ferrcri’s latest film, L’Ulti[...]had been rated a non-obscene “work of art”
by the film censor, even though it is an un-
abashed hymn to the male phallus and its limita-
tions, culminating w[...]breadknife.

Bertolucci’s emigration statement was
made on September 25, just one hour after he
heard of the ban, but later in a statement to the

Turin daily La Stampa, he said that. although he
was grateful for the overwhelming public
response to the banning of the film, he had
spoken in the heat of the moment and wished to
correct,some possible misunderstandings. He
began by withdrawing the statement that he
would be obliged to emigrate, and called for an
end to the “mobilization of opinion” in his

favor.
He added:

“I personally will not participate in any manifestations
of solidarity because I emphatically believe in the useless-
ness of demonstrations gatherings, assem[...]ul to all those who have‘ expressed
their an er in this fashion; but at the same time I am con-
vinced t at the only way is to entrust the management of
this struggle for liberty of expression —- decreed by the
Constitution — to those, who more than anyone else, have
the duty to serve and respect it; namely_ the politicians
seated in the parliament . . .”

“I believe that the struggle must be for total freedom of
expression, including freedom for pornography. The
reason is simple. An Italian adult, who from 18 years of
age onwards has the right to vote and the right to strike,
and who is obliged to perform mi[...]schoolteacher, Anita (Stephania Sandrelli), sows the seeds of revolution among thethe right to choose the theatrical entertainment he
wishes to see.”

This was a surprisingly moderate statement
for a ‘revolutionary’ filmmaker. The latter part
of this argument is reasonable enough, but_the
earlier pious hope that the “Constitution-
respecting” politicians inthe world
at large”, and these “honorable entlemen” (as
they are called in the press) woul hardly be like-
ly to run to the aid of a radical young filmmaker
who was causing unnecessary trouble. They had
enough on their plates: the Italian Women’s
Liberation Movement was pressing its demands
for abortion on request, violence was on the in-
crease in Rome and Milan, unemployment was
rising and the lira was falling. Soon however,
their help was no longer needed, for the situation
of 1900 suddenly changed. On September 27 the
press reported that the right of the Salerno
ma istrate to ban the first part of the film was
un er challenge.

The film had been given a small public screen-
ing in August in the mountain holiday resort of
Ortisei, high in the Dolomite region bordering
Austria. In this quiet town, another Italian
citizen had lodged a complaint on the grounds of
the film’s alleged immorality.

Ortisei is located in the Republic of Bolzano,
and the complaint was referred to the deputy
public prosecutor there, Dr. Vincenzo Anan[...]attack by
local fascist supporters, said that as the film was
screened in territory under his jurisdiction he
had first priority in any legal proceedings
against it.

During the pause, the press campaign con-
tinued unabated, and the weekly journals began
to conduct in-depth interviews. The weekly
magazine, Genre, interviewed Professor Borraro
and his wife and he listed the reasons which led
to the banning. Apart from the incidents men-
tioned earlier, what particularly concerned
Professor Borraro was the effect of such films as
1900 on today’s youth, which he said was
“fragile, possessing a delicate psycho-emotional
equilibrium”. He said that he had been sup-
ported in his stand by many friends and
notables, including the Catholic archbishops of
Amalfi and Salerno.

Con[...]linghieri’s death symbolizes an end to Italy of the Risorgimento and the birth of the
modern era.

7.6-;

-‘ ‘‘v‘-' ‘ .‘-.~ ~Z-V24-.

THE PERSITEOE r ISIN

..

FILM MOVEMENT, THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION,

Bruce Horsfield

There is still widespread error in the majority
of film texts concerning the nature of the percep-
tual processes which give rise to our experienc-
ing the illusion of movement when we watch the
series of still photographs that we call a motion
picture. Most film writers in the present decade
appear to have inherited the popular, but in-
complete, explanation of illusory film move-
ment, which is given in terms of the perceptual
phenomenon known as persistence of vision:

“Persistence of vision is simply the inability of the

retina to follow and signal rapid fluctuations in
brightness?”

That is to say, we go on seeing something after
we have ceased to see it, so to speak:

“The visual effects that arise when the eye is il-
luminated do not terminate immediately[...]a flashing light source to be
seen as steady when the flash rate is suflicently high. The
persistent image is of high fidelity and short d[...]tual phenomenon has been studied
for a long time: The ancient Greeks were aware
of it. With the rise of science, and the develop-
ment of optical devices and toys, it seems that
persistence of vision could explain the illusions
created by a range of inventions:

. .[...]depended on several inventions that
were part of the increased scientific activity of the late
nineteenth century: the discovery of persistence of vision,
which was the basis ofmany toys that created the illusion
of motion (Nollet‘s “whirling top" in 1765, Plateau’s and
Stampfer’s magic disc in I832, which used a shutter, and
Horner’s Zoetrope, or wheel of life, in 1834) . . . The
principle of the shutter and persistence of vision were first
combined with the projection of photographs in 1870
when Henry Renno Heyer projected his 18 pose[...]waltzing couple before an audience of 1500 people in
the Academy of Music in Philadelphia?”

Bruce Horsfield is a lectur[...]e,
mass media, and film and television courses at the Goulburn

College of Advanced Education.

AND THE PHI PHENOMENON.

While the various optical toys varied in their
design and operation, the one explanation of
how their illusory effects were created was per-
sistence of vision:

“All these (optical toys, such as the Zoetrope.
Mutoscope, Phenakistoscope etc.) are dependent on a
characteristic of the eye known as persistence of vision.
If, while one is looking at an object, it suddenly disap-
pears, the image of it will remain on the retina of the eye
for a brief space of time (approximately one-[...]d during that time one will continue to ‘see’ the
object although it is no longer before the eye. This can be
demonstrated by means of another simple and easily-
made optical to of the nineteenth century, the
Thaumatrope . . .3 hat happens here is that the eye sees
repeated views of each picture in such rapid succession
that the persistence of vision bridges the gap between
them, and they appear as a continuous[...]continuous pictures are presented simultaneously in
the same position, they merge into one.”‘

Indeed, for the Thaumatrope the persistence
theory still proves adequate. The Thaumatrope
is the spinning disc, which, when spun, blends
the two images on its surfaces:

“If a horse is on one side and a rider on the other, if a
cage is on one side and a bird on the other, we see the
rider on the horse and the bird in the cage. It cannot be
otherwise. It is simply the result of the positive
afterimages. If at dark we twirl a glowing joss stick in a
circle, we do not see one point moving from pla[...]s circular line. It is nowhere
broken because, if the movement is quick, the positive
afterimage of the light in its first position is still effective
in our eye when the glowing point has passed through the
whole circle and has reached the first position again.”-‘

The important point about the Thaumatrope
is that the combined images do not move about,
but present a static scene to the eye by superim-
position of the two pictures. But a great many
film writers use the persistence of vision theory
to explain movement effects as well, not only in
motion pictures but also in television:

"But we are willing to believe in the reality of" light-
and-shadow patterns created by pieces of film passing
across a beam of light at the rate of 24 frames a second.
A physiological effec[...]s
an afterimage; it is not instantly extinguished in the
viewer's eye; his eye fails to see the empty intervals

(lasting l/48th ofa second) between the separate still im-
ages. Neither can he see the swift motion of the tiny
electronic beam that scans the TV tube to create an im-
age with little points of light. The optical persistence of
the still images (or the running together of the points of
light) combined with our delayed perception of the tiny
changes from image to image causes us to bel[...]and psychological events, therefore, identifies the viewing
of motion pictures with the viewing of reality.""

So the persistence logos appears to have been
around at[...]coveries would not be read by
many film writers, the inadequate account is still
widespread in the present decades. Persistence of
vision theory is used to explain the illusion of
film movement in many works, including the
1971 UNESCO publication, The Role 0fFilm in
Development, Lee Bobker’s 1974 text, Elements
of Film, the l973 book The Cinema as Art. by
Ralph Stephenson and J. R. Debr[...]erspective on Film, 1972. These
are just a few of the many. Curiously, Kinder
and Houston, having described illusory film
movement in terms of persistence of vision, refer
their readers to Rudolph Arnheim’s “fuller dis-
cussion of the illusory aspects of cinema”. Yet
Arnheim is one of the few writers who refute the
persistence of vision theory.

The refutation of the persistence of vision
theory makes a most interesting study. Objec-
tions to the theory, on both theoretic and ex-
perimental grounds, go back to the late 1800s, so
that Hugo Mt"insterberg’s a priori criticism, im-
plied in the irony of this 1916 account, was not
wholly new:

“The routine explanation of the appearance of move-

ment was accordingly: that every picture of a particular
position left in the eye an afterimage until the next pic-
ture with the slightly changed position of the jumping
animal or of the marching men was in sight, and the
afterimage of this lasted until the third came. The
afterimages were responsible for the fact that no inter-
ruptions were noticeable, while the movement itself
resulted simply from the passing of one position into
another. What else is the perception ofmovement but the
seeing of a long series of different posit[...]

The irony is in the last sentence, because
Mtinsterberg knew very well that if the account
is taken literally, that is, if motion is made up of
many different “stills” then the perceived effect
should, therefore, be jerky, lik[...]perceive
stroboscopic motion, but natural motion, in
films, then there must be something wrong with
the explanation. The more satisfactory account
must be given in terms of another perceptual
phenomenon of vision, known as the “phi
phenomenon”. Miinsterberg, a German lecturer
in psychology, came to Harvard on the invita-
tion of William James in 1892, and became one
of America’s foremost psychologists. Of par-
ticular concern to him was the need to pop-
ularize psychology as a science, and he wrote
and spoke much on that topic.

In the Foreword to his book on Miinsterberg’s
The Silent Photoplay in 1916, Richard Griffith
writes:

“Early in 1915 (Miinsterberg) chanced to see Annette
Kellerman in Neptune’s Daughter, and he spent much of
the following summer in nickelodeons, studying this new
thing which so astonishingly illustrated the result of his
own researches . . . ‘intellectually the world has been
divided into two classes — the “highbrows" and the
“lowbrows",‘ he wrote, ‘Thethe Pic-
tograph, or motion picture film, as we call[...]ier researchers, as Miinsterberg himself tells
us in his description of the phi phenomenon:

“Both (Wertheimer and Korte) worked with a delicate
instrument in which two light lines on a dark ground
could be exposed in very quick succession and in which it
was possible to vary the position of the lines, the distance
ofthe lines, the intensity oftheir light, the time exposure
of each, and the time between the appearance of the first
and ofthe second. . . lfa vertical line is immediately fol-
lowed by a horizontal, the two together give the impres-
sion of one right angle. If the time between the vertical
and the horizontal is long, first one then the other is seen.
But at a certain length of time interval a new effect is
reached. We see the vertical line falling over and lying
flat like the horizontal line. If the eyes are fixed on the
point in the midst of the angle we might expect that this
movement phenomenon would stop, but . . . the experi-
ment shows that under these circumstances we frequently
get the strongest impression of motion. If we use two
horizontal lines, the one above the other, we see, if the
right time interval is chosen, that the upper one moves
downward toward the lower. But we can introduce there
a very interesting variation. If we make the lower line,
which appears objectively after the upper one, more in-
tense, the total impression is one which begins with the
lower. We see first the lower line moving towards the up-
per one which also approaches the lower; and then fol-
lows the second phase in which both appear to fall down
to the position ofthe lower one. It is not necessary to go
further into details in order to demonstrate that the ap-
parent movement is in no way the mere result of an
afteriinage and that the impression of motion is surely
more than the mere perception of successive phases of
movement. The movement is in these cases not really
seen from without but is superadded, by the action ofthe
mind, to motionless pictures.”

Fi[...]vement, which is actual dis-
placement of objects in space and time. The
cinematic illusion is caused by the senses being
fooled, and more than persistence of vision is re-
quired for the deception to succeed. Two percep-
tual characteristics are involved, persistence of
vision and the phi phenomenon of apparent
movement. What is the role of each?

First of all we must begin with the necessary
arithmetic. For a projector screening a[...]d speed for most projec-
tors) then each frame of the film 1S exposed on
the screen for 1/48th second. So for every se-
cond of the film, only 24 x l/48th, or half sec, lS
comprised of image time. The other half second
is made up of total blackness, caused by the
masking action ofthe rotating shutter in the pro-
jector, so designed"to Blank off projection[...]ssive still picture is jerked into place.
Without the shatter the screened image is a

224 — Cinema rapers, January

hopeless blur, seen sometimes when the projec-
tor mechanism is not working properly. There
are 24 maskings of the projector gate 1/48th se-
cond each in duration, making up the other half
second. Of course none of us see these blackouts
because the image of each preceding still picture
on the film lingers as a strong positive
afterimage, otherwise called persistence of vi-
sion. This is as far as the traditional explanation
goes, and its main flaw is that it does not say
why the series of clearly perceived stills is not
seen as jerky motion.

So that the illusion of smooth, fluid move-
ment can be better explained, we must include
the phi phenomenon ofapparent movement. The
experiments and demonstrations of Exner,
Wertheim[...]nd a host of others have
been employed to clarify the illusory effects
resulting from the projection of film. Phi move-
ment is the appearance of movement where none
actually exists, and may be witnessed in a great
variety of situations. The navigation lights of an
aeroplane, flashing alternately, can give the illu-
sion of motion whereby one light appears to
move to the other one. Advertising lighting,
flashed at the appropriate rate, gives the distinct
impression of movement. Phi movement “is
generally studied in the laboratory by using a
very simple display -— me[...]witched so that just after
one light has gone off the other comes on. What
is seen — provided the distance between the
lights and the time intervals between the lights,
and the time intervals between their flashes is
about right — is a single light moving across
from the position of the first light to the
second.”“’

The intermittent images must be presented
with space and timejumps that are not too large,
since what is seen will vary markedly with varia-
tions to the rate of flashing and the gap between
the flashes, as in the following diagram:"

....,.....,%

but from the ‘phi phenomenon’, would have been less
astoun[...]ption" . . ."

Like Miinsterberg, Rudolf Arnheim, in 1971,
acknowledged the implications of Wertheimer’s
experiments, stati[...]we see
motion, motion must be produced somewhere in
the brain”." Another, Paul Kolers, who has
recently written a most comprehensive survey“
of the whole question of illusory and veridical
motion, devotes a large chapter to Wertheimer.
Kolers mentions the legend that Wertheimer’s
interest in apparent movement arose from his
contemplation of the physiological and psy-
chological aspects of the motion picture. More
importantly, Kolers asserts that no satisfactory
account of the phi phenomenon has yet been put
forth. This means that we cannot as yet fully ex-
plain how the film illusion is created. Even per-
sistence of v[...]roceeding further, some notice should
be taken of the work of S. Exner, to whom
Wertheimer and a host of other researchers are
indebted for discovering, in 1875-6, apparent
movement. Exner ascertained that the time
order of two spatially separated successive
electric sparks can be correctly perceived (on the
average) when the interval between them is not
less than 0.045 secs. Then, putting the sparks
closer to each other in space, he achieved
stroboscopic motion, instead of succession. The
threshold time at which the direction ofthe mov-
ing spark was perceived was only 0.014 secs.
Movement, Exner concluded, must involve a
special process of the mind,” and perception of
motion cannot be attri[...]y of posi-
tion and perception of order. Interest in ap-
parent movement then mostly lapsed until
Wertheimer’s work in 1910, which was
published in 1912. His findings created excited
interest, and have been described since as the

L.

O.

‘T-

i-\'. rapid rates of l'l:i.shing, two lights are seen in place (“.siiiiult:ineit_x" — top panel): at the proper slower rate, a
single light appears to mov[...]ocation smtmtlily and C(‘nllnlJ()lJ$l_\' across the screen to the second loca-
tion (“tiptiiiiiil movement" ~ bot[...]tes, 11 light seems to move part-w;i_\-‘ across
the screeii. dlSLlppCill'. reappear at a more distant point and continue onto the second location (“partial

iiiiiiiement")

The relevance of the phi phenomenon (called
beta motion by some writers) to the explanation
of apparent movement in film is established by
Wertheimer’s experiment where lines set at right
angles were used. This work is the paradigm of
all the visual content of all the separate frames
of all films, since the two lines are an abstrac-
tion of the two dimensional content of each
frame, including color, size, shape and position.

Having seen the prevalence of the persistence
of vision theory, we may conjecture concerning
the number of people who are aware of the more
complete view, which includes both persistence
of vision and the phi experience. There have been
some who have not missed the fuller account:

“Film students who attended Slavko Vorkapich’s lec-
tures at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, and were
astounded at his demonstration that the illusion of film
movement does not derive from the persistence of vision

beginnings of the Gestalt movement in psy-
chology.

Of central importance to these early ex-
perimenters was the Critical Fusion Frequency
(CFF ), which is the rate of flashing below which
mere spatial and tem[...]is
observed, and above which optimal motion i.e.,
the phi phenomenon, is experienced. Many
studies since have shown that the CFF varies
from person to person, with experimental condi-
tions, with practice at observing the
phenomenon, with volition and attitudes, with
spatial separation of the flashes, and luminosity
of the stimuli. For light of a given level of bril-
liance 30 flashes per second will result in a
steady light; for a brighter light the CFF will be
as high as 50 flashes per second, which may
result in flicker effect. Flicker can be an irritant,
as in a faulty fluorescent light when the ends

“Television gets over the problem of flicker rather dif-
ferently. The picture is not presented as a whole, as in the
cinema, but is built up in strips (known as an “interlaced
roster”) whic[...]fected by flicker.

“lt also presents a hazard in some unexpected circum-
stances, such as when driving by a row of trees whose
shadows are cast upon the road by a low sun, or when
landing a helicopter. The rotor blades of a helicopter
produce a flickerin[...]nd they probably arise from direct disturbance of the
visual systems of the brain . . . Stimulation by bright
flashing light[...]car without severe and audible discom-
fort when the sun is below the trees. He cannot
tolerate the flickering effect.)

Creating phi movement is not the only way of

producing illusion of movement. The following
graphic, called a “sunburst” (it is the one-time
logo of the Ilford firm) can produce an illusion
of apparent movement. To try this out con-
centrate on the white centre of the graphic for
about 20 seconds, then look immediate[...]surface. Movement should be seen.
(Description of the illusion here might assist in
its creation, which is cheating a little):

$4
74$

There are many other variations of the illu-
sions of movement, demonstrated by
Wertheimer and others. For example, to refute
the theory, prevalent at the turn of the century,
that the illusion of motion is associated with
movements of the eye i.e. in following an object,
Wertheimer presented “in one flash two lines
which were a small distance apart and in a se-
cond flash two others flanking the first two but a
larger distance apart. The perceived motion then
went in opposite directions simultaneously,””
which of course the e es cannot do.

Also, “he presente one flash to one eye and
another flash to the other eye and achieved good
perceptions of motion; he alleged therefore that
motion perception was ‘behind the eye’ and not
‘in the eye’.“‘ In other experiments Wertheimer
found that observers of the flashes of two dif-
ferent colored lights reported that the flashes

change color in flight. He also found that after
a sufflcient number oftrial flashes, “motion was
seen for a few additional trials even when only
one flash was presented: the visual system
persevered in its response to a single flash
in spite of the absence of its partner.”‘° Many
varied experiments have since resulted in many
classifications of apparent movement, so much
so that one writer complained that the whole
Greek alphabet was being used up. Phi motion
was objectless motion (for simplicity I have used
phi in a broad, inclusive sense); beta motion was
apparent movement wherein an illusory object
was seen to move (this would be relevant to film
movement, of course); delta motion is phi mo-
tion of the second flash towards the first flash,
which occurs when the second flash is more in-
tense than the first; gamma motion is “the ap-
parent expansion at onset and contraction at[...]g shapes have been observed
to alter their shapes in flight; others to disappear
and reappear. Kolers summarizes the illusions:

“Two properly placed and properly tuned flashes induce
the illusion of a single object moving from its first loca-
tion across the intervening empty space to its second
location, w[...]her disappear or return to its
first location. If the interstimulus and intercycle intervals
are equal and of proper duration, the illusory object is
seen oscillating in smooth motion; ifthe intercycle inter-
val is several times the duration of the interstimulus in-
terval, the object disappears at the second location and
movement recommences at the first.

“In other words, when conditions are right the visual
system creates a perceptual object in the intervening
space where physically there is none. The perceptual ob-
ject created, moreover, resolves differences in appearance
between the two physical objects, such as differences in
color or shape. Hence the perceptual construction is not a
mere redundant filling in of the space between the flashes
with copies of the flashes themselves; it is an active
resolution o[...]vertheless be explored. For example, we know
that the positive afterimage that we call per-
sistence of vision keeps each frame of the film
clearly in view until the next frame takes its place,
and that there is no perceptual decay in any of
the images. But, we may ask, why does not the
eye combine each sustained image with the im-
age of the next frame of the fllm, resultin in
blurring, double images and so forth‘? Why oes
not persistence of vision result in blurring in
general, not only of fllm images, but of all that
we see around us in our daily lives? The answer is
that not all images that are formed on the retina
are accepted as perceptions by the brain. Duke-
Elder states that “the afterimage mechanism is a
peripheral one dependin[...]that never reaches con-
sciousness”.“ So that the afterimage of, say,
frame 1 is still present during the perception of
frame 2, but only in the form of retinal activity.
This may be illustrated[...]d half black and with a
sector omitted is rotated in front of a
background partly red and partly blue-green, so
that images are presented to the eye in the order:
colored background, white sector, black sector.
At a certain speed of rotation it is found that the
complimentary colors of the background alone
are seen, that is, the red appears pale blue-green
and the blue-green appears pink. The
mechanism is as follows: ~— the red stimulus
causes the succeeding white to be tinted with the
complimentary blue-green: a second red
stimulus arriving at the period of the afterimage
is suppressed; but a succeeding white[...]g disk

sciousness, it has left its impression on the
retina.

It is also worthwhile to study the possible
roles of the l/48th sec. blackout between frames.
The evidence suggests that the blackout has
further valuable functions: it enhances the
quality of the persisting image, preventing its
decay, and it makes the retina more sensitive to
the subsequent stimulation of the next frame in
the film.

The evidence that both functions occur is
derived from the phenomenon known as succes-
sive contrast. If we regard the series, im-
age/blackout image/blackout, as a succession
of sudden dif erences in what the retina receives,
then that succession is actually a more suitable
presentation to the retina than, say, im-
age/image/image or image/co[...]een that after a stimulus of moderate inten-
sity the presence of a positive afterimage indicates the
persistence of activity of the visual ap aratus. While this
activity lasts, the retina is incapable o reacting normally
to a second stimulus of a similar nature, but shows an in-
creased sensitivity to processes of an opposite kind,
which results in the production of a negative afterimage
complimentary to the first stimulus. Stimulation has
therefore an inhi[...]vity of
other types."“

That is, by delaying “the second stimulus of a
similar nature”, i.e. the next frame, the positive
afterimage of the flrst frame is enhanced. It is
important that the screen is blacked out between
frames (as opposed to diffuse light filling in the
l/48th sec. gap, for example) as a like stimulus,[...]ve
afterimage of complementary colors to those of
the primary image. A film on a screen could fair-
ly be described as “a stimulus of moderate inten-
sity.”

The phenomenon of successive contrast is a
most important characteristic of the ages:

Continued on P. 285

Cinema Papers,[...]

I’ve often wond[...]t’s all right. But I
have been acquainted early in my
life with all kinds of madness — all
kinds of strange coincidences. I
once knew someone who was taken
to a home, to an institution, and I
have al[...]g which preoccupies to-
days society so much that the sub-
ject itself seems to be something
very vile.

The outlook of the characters in

Opposite: Jack Nicholson and Faye
Dunaway in Chinatown.

“The Tenant” is very European. Is
this something you strove for?

Well the book itself, the novel
which I have adapted, is so deeply
rooted in Paris. It is so French, so
typically French that I would not
undertake an adaptation, changing
the nationality of the piece itself. I
like going places and making films
in different countries and whenever
I go to a new country I try to
observe what is most typical, tangi-
ble about the place I intend to film
in and I try to render it in my work.
I have done films in New York, like
Rosemary’s Baby. It doesn’t, I
hope, have any particular flaws as
far as the nationality of the film is
concerned. It is very American,
New York-ese. I made Chinatown
in Los Angeles, and it was Los
Angelese.

The Tenant is a French story. But
it was purchased by an American
studio, by Paramount, an[...]oject — but I would not
undertake that.

One of the strengths of your films
is the strong sense of location.
“Chinatown” for example really
captured the mood of Los Angeles.
How do you achieve this?

Yo[...]you see old
magazines, films, photos. You go
to the libraries and try to create
some idea of the town at the time. I
don’t think it is difficult. It’s a q[...]f intuition and will. Ifyou are
really interested in the place and
want to render it in your work, then
it’s feasible and it doesn’t[...]imaginary place has to have
some kind of research in it, some
justification and motivation.

To give the actors roots in the
place they come from . . .

To give them space, rather. To
place them in a concrete place, even
ifit is an imaginary place. . . even if
it is the planet Mars! You have to
ask yourself what would be the way
of behaving? What is the weight of
a human being on a planet ofa dif-
fere[...]apparatus? These things
give you more ideas about the

behavior of the characters. They
make them richer because they
relate to something. They don’t
walk in an idle, futile space, they
walk in a concrete space.

In “The Tenant” the central
character’s environment — the
apartment — is very clearly drawn,
yet he appea[...]. . .

Well, now we are talking about
two things. The man who is uncom-
fortable is an imaginary character,
he is the hero of the film. But the
space itself is concrete, made by the
filmmaker. We must not mix up the
fantasy with reality. Film is a fan-
tasy . . . every film is a fantasy
because it is conceived by the
makers and the characters don’t
really live.

You have a reput[...]culous. Everything

Roman Polanski as Trelkovsky, the central character in The Tenant.

Cinema Papers, January — 227

has to be done in a certain way, and
done ahead of time. How much do
you rely on improvisation and things
happening on the spot?

Well, I always conceive
everything beforeh[...]w
elements and give it freshness.

I like to have the maximum
number of elements considered
beforehand because I like conceiv-
ing it and I like working on the
script. For me this is the fun of
filmmaking. I come from a film
school and[...]ak-
ing it all happen before you find
yourself on the set you save yourself
a lot of trouble. You know what
you have to deal with, and you are
well prepared.[...]ou
shouldn’t be bothered with while
you’re on the set.

When you act in one of your films
— as you do in “The Tenant” — do
you encounter any problems
direc[...]e dealing with
someone you understand better
than the others. That’s the advan-
tage of it. The technical problem of
staging the scene can be very easily
overcome. I start with rehearsal, I
don’t even look at the camera
which rests somewhere in the cor-
ner of the studio. I go through the
scene with the other actors, or
alone, whatever it requires. When
that is settled I have an understudy
or a stand-in who has been observ-
ing the rehearsal to go through all
the motions. Then I line up my shot

228 — Cinema Papers, January

with the camera. I see, exactly how
it works by looking through my
viewfinder.

Now comes the more difficult
part — the performance, the acting
itself. It requires a tremendous
amount of concentration and relax-
ation at the same time. You have to
be relaxed . . . your face[...]o be completely loose.
You have to concentrate on the
character, forget everything else
and think of the function that you
have to perform within the shot or
scene. If you suddenly start think-
ing a[...]era move-
ments, other players’ performances
or the numerous details that the
director usually has to tackle, then
suddenly you[...]to forget — you leave
your director’s hat on the director’s
chair and you put on the actor’s
hat.

What about monitoring your own
performance?

That is n[...]another take. Lousy
actors are often grouchy, but the
people who have no struggle with
their performanc[...]al with.

Let’s talk for a moment about
some of the top actors you’ve
worked with. Jack Nicholson, for
example.

Jack Nicholson is about the
finest actor I have ever worked

with. He is pleasant to be with on
the set because acting is easy for
him. Sometimes whe[...]cult you can feel it: he becomes
less pleasant to the others. Jack

Jack Nicholson: a consummate actor.[...]lines before going to
bed. And when he appears on the
set you can be sure he knows every
line of his di[...]’t.

How did you find working with
Dunaway?

It was very hard. Very hard. She
was struggling with the perfor-
mance. She is difficult to work with
. . . maybe the most difficult person
I have ever worked with. To tell you
the truth, a great pain in the arse.

But she gave a great perfor-
mance . . .

She did, but it was blood, sweat
and tears. But I don’t regret it. I
don’t regret having worked with
her.

What style of acting were you
trained in? Stanislavsky’s method or
a more traditional st[...]at
there are a lot of interesting obser-
vat-ions in his work, and some of
them can help a beginner tr[...]r style. I think you just
do it, and I do believe in talent.
Some people have it and others
don’t. I was not aware ofit as much
when I was beginning , but now
when I think back, I realise[...]s, there are some eople
who immediately understan what
I want — and they may never have
had any acting[...]of work will make any dif-
ference.

Do you think the intense prepara-
tion of Method actors is a help[...]aches
people to find something — par-
ticularly the people who don’t have
it — that the others already have in-
stinctively: the ability to switch
into somebody else, another
character; the ability to become
someone else and do certain things,
following a different pattern of
behavior other than the one the
person is born with.

However, this preparation c[...]y says, to summarize it,
that if you want to make the gesture
of banging a table with your fist in
anger, you have to concentrate, you
have to build up this anger within
you. And then comes the moment
when it will spontaneously make
you clench your fist and bang the
table. But Vakhantangov, another
Russian, observed later, if you
clench your fist and bang the table
it develops in you similar emotions
without any build-up.

So it[...]his physical action
causes it, and is just one of the ways
to create emotional build-up.

I don’t rea[...]eeing an actor
dancing around trying new steps on
the stage. What I mean is that you
need to concentrate, an[...]

Quite clearly then, as a director
you have to create an environment in
which the actors can feel natural and
allow their talents to come
out . . .

It mainly depends on the
character of the person with whom
I work. I don’t have any articular
method because every in ividual is
entirely different. There are
probably as many personalities as
men on earth.

What was it like working with
Isabelle Adjani on “The Tenant”?

It is quite difficult to work with
he[...]she lacks
cinematographic experience. She
worked in the theatre for two or
three years and became a big star in
the classical theatre in France. She
is very conscientious and she works
v[...]trates. For exam-
ple, one day I saw her standing in a
corner shaking, and I asked her
what the matter was. She said she’d
been preparing for the scene. I told

her that we hadn’t even started
lighting let alone rehearsing. And
by the time we did start she was
completely exhausted: there were

no tears and no[...]belle also likes intense per-
sonal relationships in her work, and
I have difficulty in really develop-
ing this type of atmosphere. on the
set. I don’t like it, I like to keep it
very re[...]her. It makes
it more difficult for me to work on
the set.

Turning specifically to “The
Tenant” — did it turn out as you
planned?

It came more or less as I wanted.
But don’t forget that The Tenant is
an adaptation of a novel. And if
you de[...]ck with it. You just have to ac-
cept it. I liked the novel, although
there are some flaws in it — it
changes too drastically in the mid-
dle. It’s like two parts.

I tried to unif[...]I always try to
be as faithful as I can. That’s the
way I was with Rosemary’s Baby
and that’s the way I was with The
Tenant. These are the only two
books I have made into films.

With The Tenant I liked the
character I depict in the film very
much. Actually I was more in-
terested in playing the part than
making the film. When it was first
given to me some 10 years ago I
didn‘t wa[...]lar at-
mosphere. But I said I would love
to play the part. And when
Paramount acquired the rights to
the book, Bob Evans thought that
was a great idea.

Eventually, a project on which I
was working for a long time was
postponed for some 10 months and
Bob Evans asked me if I would
both act in The Tenant and direct it.
As it seemed like a relativ[...]d want to ask you one specific
question about “The Tenant”. At
the end of the film the character you
portray attempts suicide in exactly
the same way as the previous tenant.
I-Ie isn’t successful, so he g[...]s again —
and gets a tremendous horselaugh
from the audience. Was this black
comedy intentional?

Yes. It should get a laugh.
Someone who misses the first time
and tries to do it another time
deserv[...]e I
would say.

You don’t think you go too far?
The change in character at this point
is very abrupt. One moment the
audience is sharing your paranoia
and terror, and the next they are
plunged into slapstick — almost
comic melodrama.

Well, that shift has its source in
the novel itself. There is a shift in
the novel, and, as I said, you have
to change it comp[...]o
do this particular novel I had to
cope with it. The change of style is
conscious, it’s not somethin[...]Yes I see it as a problem. But I
accepted it at the beginning and just
had to be content with it —
otherwise I would have had to start
anew. Either do the film in the style
of the first half, or do it in the style
of the second.

So you will consciously select a
project[...]at’s right. It is a kind of
major flaw. Perhaps the idea should
be to make an intermission and let
people have ice-cream in the mid-
dle. Then they’ll have forgotten
what it was like in the beginning.

So when you take a project and
you realize that there are certain
flaws in it, rather than break the un-
ity of the piece, you just go with
it . . .

Well no, usually I try to organize
the construction of the film. But
with The Tenant there was no visi-
ble way. Maybe someone more
talented would be able to deal with
it. The only way would be to avoid
him having any kind of visions or
hallucinations in the second part,
because those are sources of
anguish, and they are the things
that change the style of the film.
Perhaps another way would be to
make it com[...]whether it is
happening or not — whether it is in
the imagination or not.

But then l’m afraid the film
would be tremendously dull. I don’t
think[...]partment.

You would certainly attract a
group of what I call stamp collec-
tors who laugh at the film and who
would be acclaiming the sober ap-
proach of the director. But you
wouldn’t see any other people in the
cinema. To make it entertaining
you have to create some kind of
suspense in the film, and since it is
about a man’s solitude and about
his paranoia and hallucinations,
you have to show the things he sees
or believes are around him. *

ROM[...]ROMAN POLANSKI
FILMOGRAPHY ‘

Shorts

1955-57
The Bike (ScreenpIay:' Roman
Polanski) Unfinished

I957-58
The Crime (Screenplay: Roman
Polanski)

I958 Break Up the Dance (Screenplay:
Roman Polanski)

Two Men and a[...]en Angels Fall (Screenplay:
Roman Polanski)

I961 The Fat and the Lean (Screenplay:
Roman Polanski/Jean Pierre Rous[...]ondratuik)

I963 A River of Diamonds (episode for The
Best Swindles in the World)

(Screenplay Roman Polanski/Gerard
Brach)

FGBIUTBS

I962 Knife in the Water (Screenplay:
Roman Polanski/Jerzy
Skolimows[...]c (Screenplay: Roman
Polanski/Gerard Brach)

I967 The Fearless Vampire Killers or
Pardon Me But Your Teeth Are In My
Neck (Dance of The Vampires)
(Screenplay: Roman Polanski/Gérard
Bra[...]semary’s Baby (Screenplay: Roman
Polanski after the novel by Ira Levin)

1972 Macbeth (Screenplay: Roman
Polanski after the play by William
Shakespeare)

I973 What? (Screenplay: Roman Polan-
ski/Gérard Brach).

I974 Chinatown (Screenplay: Robert
Towne)

I976 The Tenant (Screenplay: Roman
Polanski/Gérard Brach after the novel
Le Locataire Chimérique by Roland
Topor)

other Screenplays

I964 Do You Like Women dir. Jean Léon
(in collaboration with Gérard Brach)

I968 La Fille D’en Face dir. Jean Daniel
Simon (in collaboration with Gerard
Brach)

I969 A Day At The Beach dir. Simon Hes-
sera (produced by Roman Pol[...]elski

I954 A Generation dir. Andrzej Wajda

I955 The Magic Bicycle dir. Silik Sternfeld

I956 End of N[...]0 Innocent Sorcerers dir. Andrzej Wajda
Beware of the Yeti dir. Andrzej
Czekalski
See You Tomorrow dir. Januos
Morgenstern
Bad Luck dir. Andrzej Munk

I961 The Fat and the Lean

I962 Mammals

I967 The Fearless Vampire Killers or
Pardon Me But Your Teeth Are In My
Neck (Dance of The Vampires)

I969 The Magic Christian dir. Joseph
McGrath

I973 What?

I974 Chinatown
Blood for Dracula dir. Paul Morrissey

I976 The Tenant

Cinema Papers, January — 229

AUSTRALIAN FILM PRODUCER: PART 4

FINANCING THE PRODUCTION -

1

In this fourth part of a 19-part series,
Cinema Pape[...]itor Leon Gorr
move on with our model producer to the most
difficult stage of pre-production: the obtaining
of finance for the proposed film. Literary rights
to the property have been secured and a com-
pleted scre[...]een commissioned. An

' agent may be working with the producer in an
attempt to package the production. But before
the venture can proceed further, finance must be
found.

The Australian film industry in its recent
redevelopment has made use of two sources of
financing which are largely alien to the ex-
perience of the U.S.-based producer. On the one
hand there has been the heavy cash investment.
firstly by federal and now by state legislatures,
and on the other the frequent recourse by
producers to the funds of ‘angels’ or private in-

Cinema Papers is pleased to announce
that in conjunction with the authors of
Guide for the Australian Film Producer,
Leon Gorr and Antony I. Ginnane,
preparations are in hand for this series to
be made available to readers in a more
complete and detailed form on a private
subscription basis. In this and earlier in-
stalments of the series limitations of

space have prevented the authors from
presenting a full selection of precedents.

For example to print precedent 7B, the
Production Distribution Agreement refer-
red to in the second section of this article
would have taken s[...]well as others
excluded for reasons of space from the
series plus a continuous update of material
previously published will be available on
an annual basis in loose leaf binder form.
Subscription details will be available in the
next issue of Cinema Papers.

230 — Cinema Pape[...]ive monies.

This use of individuals or groups of in-
dividuals to bankroll a production is common on
the Broadway live theatre scene, but until
recently it has been most unusual in either New
York or Los Angeles-linked film produc[...]have been used to some extent, from time to
time, in the U.S. and Australia.

In this part of the series we propose to deal
with two forms of priva[...]‘angels’
and via film distribution companies. In the next
issue, we will consider various forms of sta[...]nment funding and other methods
of film financing in use mentioned above.

‘ANGEL’ FINANCING

The term ‘angels’ can encompass a wide
variety of would-be investors, ranging from the
family or wealthy friends of the producer to TV
stations, institutional lenders etc. But what dis-
tinguishes an ‘angel’ investor from a distributor
or exhibitor investor is that while the ‘angel’ is
primarily interested in the end returns on his in-
vestment, the distributor investor will also want
distribution rights to the completed film, for
which he will receive a distr[...]integrated, he may also want to make
profits with the film in his cinema as an exhibitor
investor (like General Cinemas of Boston,
partners with Lew Grade’s ITC in Associated
General Films) and also want priority runs for
the completed film in his own cinemas. Similar-
ly, a TV station which invests in return for televi-
sion rights to the completed film is not an
‘angel’.

In Australia, ‘angels’ have included motor car
d[...]and accountants (and
their clients), and doctors. The track record of

success for productions which ha[...]few ‘angels’ have come back for a second try in
another film.

The ideal ‘angel’, of course, is a speculative in-
vestor, well cashed up, who appreciates the hi h
risks involved in film production, is aware of t e
potentially long waiting time from the day he signs
his cheque to the day the film goes into release,
and has some interest in or desire to associate
himself (albeit to a small degree) with the so-
called glamor of showbusiness.

Normally, ‘[...]A company is incor-
porated to act as trustee for the unit trust and at
the same time to provide production services for
the filming. It becomes the contracting entity
with talent, crew, laboratories etc. Each ‘angel’
enters into an agreement with the trustee com-
pany, a model of which is set out below in Prece-
dent 7a. ,

The preamble to this agreement sets out
details of the producers, the project and the in-
vestors, the amount of the budget, and those
costs which the producer may deduct from funds
received from either the investors or distributors
and exhibitors of the finished film. The trustee
company warrants that it has all the necessary
licences and copyrights to the material to be
used in the film. If the producer personally holds
any of these licences or copyrights, he will need
to assign them to the trustee company before ex-
ecuting the agreement with the investors.

Clause 3 of the agreement sets out the respon-
sibility of the producer in the disbursement of
funds received after release of the production.
Some notes of this clause are appropr[...]though this agreement contemplates investors
and the producer sharing equally in the net
receipts from the first dollar received from the
distributor, it is not uncommon for the investors
first to be repaid their subscription to.the fund
and then for the producer and investors to share
as per the agreed split.

Secondly, it may be necessary for one investor
to receive priority of payment over other in-
vestors and the producer. (For example, he may

Thirdly, this clause raises the vexed question
of the equitable split between producer and, in-
vestor, the model agreement contemplating 75
per cent of the net receipts being dispersed
among the investors with the remainder going to
the producer.

This practice of a 75/25 split is common in
Australia, following its introduction in early
agreements approved by the Australian Film
Development Corporation and maintained by
the Australian Film Commission. Its choice and
accept[...]lian live theatre production practice. Nor-
mally the split between money elements of the
film and the creative elements of production
worldwide is on a[...]r may be able to command as
much as a 60/40 split in his favor.

It is easy to argue that the extreme difficulties
experienced in attracting private finance for film
production in Australia, forced the AFDC to ac-
cept and endorse a less favorable spl[...]been warranted if
things had been different. But the reality is that
putting a film’s finance togeth[...]is any more difficult to attract private finance in
Australia than it is in any ofthe main production
centres of the world.

Furthermore, while giving the producer 50 per
cent of the net receipts may at first glance seem
over-generous, the heading “producer” may also
include the profit participations of associate
producer, writ[...]rector, as well as
finder’s fees participation. The producer, too,
has to option the original material, get a
screenplay and package t[...]ore he is even
sure a project is going to get off the ground. He
may, in fact, develop two or three projects
before he gets off the ground. In the end the
truth is that so few film producers in Australia
(or anywhere) ever show any net receipts that the
investors concerned, when such receipts are in
fact made available, should be all the more eager
to reward and nurture “the man with the nose”.

Once the agreement is signed, the unit trust
will be set up and the investor will receive his
share of the investors’ units in the trust in the
proportion his investment bears to the total
budget of the production. For example, on a
$100,000 film with a 75/25 investor producer

(I) End Money is the iinal sum of money which a producer
may need to make up his production’s budget.

split of the net, a $10,000 investor will receive
750 units of a 10,000 units trust. Subject to the
provisions of the trust deed, these units can be
assigned on request to the trustee company.

Some agreements may limit the income the
unit trust receives by excluding the payment of
certain foreign receipts or television sales
proceeds to the funds. Further there may be a
time cut—out for the investors and the fund to
receive income (e.g. seven years) or a mo[...]fter a certain amount of profit is dis-
bursed to the unit trust). Again these extra
benefits for the producer will only be available if
he has a very[...]or if
these cut-out points are reached ownership in the
copyright of the project would revert to the
producer.