AFI Awards - Screenwriting

It's pretty much a lay down misere that Warwick Thornton will win Best Original Screenplay at the Australian Film Institute awards next Saturday. Not my cup of tea story-telling wise but Samson and Delilah is universally acclaimed and lauded. The complete absence of dialogue between the two leads struck me as a huge contrivance but apparently that's just me.

The Adapted Screenplay category should prove far more interesting with two films of the "bleak" school (Beautiful Kate and Blessed) up against Mao's Last Dancer and Balibo. With Australian box office earnings now over $14 million dollars I am hoping Jan Sardi (MLD) wins in a cakewalk.

What do you think? Who wrote the best adapted screenplay of 2009? (vote in the poll ----->).

Do you agree S&D will romp in best original screenplay or will there be a surprise result?

If Rachel Ward wins for BK will she tell us all to take our dark, bleak, depressing medicine and learn to love it?

Will anyone mention Jim Schembri in their acceptance speech?

Putting business back into the Australian film industry

Interesting article on the ninemsn site by Alyssa Braithwaite quoting the President of the Screen Producers Association of Australia, Anthony Ginnane. In his opening address to the SPAA conference in Sydney, Ginnane put the debate about the state of the industry front and centre:

"Industry and government need to accept this is a business, not a culture fest.

"In the film industry government intervention has been consistently used to assist in the creation of product the market does not want, and the market tells us that, year in, year out, by rejecting it en masse.

"We don't listen and we don't want the government to notice."

He goes on to cite Mao's Last Dancer, which has grossed over $13 million dollars at the Australian box office, as an example of the sort of films we should be making instead of social realism dramas.

There's no doubt that the debate about "art versus commerce" is due to come to a head in this country. The raft of depressing, bleak, miserable social realist dramas that no-one goes to see yet are heavily subsidised by taxpayers money through screen funding agencies is choking the industry. Films like Australia, however, resonated with the local audience ($30+ million) but are derided by the film intelligentsia as crass commercialism.

The good news is that genre films should be able to re-assert themselves instead of the oblique art-house fare traditionally favoured by the screen agencies. A critical mass appears to be slowly building to reintroduce a key element in the film-making process - yes, the audience!