Tonight in Australia: an unofficial history On SBS …
After two decades of the conservative government, the early 1970s introduced a period of social and cultural progress, with art at the forefront of this transformation. The government film unit, supported by generous government financing and now renamed film Australia, was given the task of documenting the changing face of the nation.
The films made in these years were inspired by the desire to show Australians that their lives on the screen share in a new culture of acceptance and diversity. Cut documentaries such as Brad and Jenny tried to normalize homosexuality, years before it was decriminalized in most Australian states. The images of these films of homosexual and lesbian people who do everyday things – eat, go out, take a bus – presented a version of life unchanged by stigma and shame. It was a vision of what society could be. But these explorations did come with hidden risks of defamation and fear of personal safety, threats that would eventually relegate the film Jenny to archive storage and away from public eyes.
An abundance of other films serves to emphasize the tensions between the progressive ambitions of the government and the embrace of change by the public. A voice to be heard, handles optimism as it tells the story of the Aboriginal Consultative Committee, the first time Aboriginals were elected in a body that could represent their interests in the federal parliament. We see how that excitement was quickly affected by the disappointment that nobody really listened.
Similarly, migrant stories such as migrant women, Ford Riot and Robin show a society that was not so inclusive, not as worthwhile, and not as inviting as the marketing of the immigration department had promised. The resignation of Whitlam in 1975 and Labor’s subsequent election loss of landslides suggested that social change might take place faster than many people were prepared. Activists were afraid that reforms of hard-fought may never be achieved again and that many civil servants filmmakers, out of fearful fear, were encouraged to make daring and border-flushing films-while they could still.
19:30 Wednesday on SBS.
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