33 Postcards: China and Australia

Lecture 3Australian Cinema, RMIT University, COMM1033

Dr Steve Gaunsonstephen.gaunson@rmit.edu.au

International perspectives• Australia is represented through a Chinese lens.

– Multicultural experience• Director: Pauline Chan — international director

– Born in Vietnam; Chinese parents; completed her education in Hong Kong; studied cinema in America; moved to Australia in the 1980s.

• Character: Mei Mei — Chinese girl looking at Australia through her cultural gaze.

• Link to Finding Nemo

“Prospect of being able to write, direct, and produce a film that could reach an international audience”.

— Pauline Chan

Breaking down myths

Dean (Guy Pearce) represents himself as the stereotypical Aussie male• Park ranger• Family man

• Australia is a mythically exotic land – Reality is much darker– The film exposes a dark underbelly of Sydney

• Is this a positive representation of Australia for China?

• Think of the difference to Australia projecting itself for the international.

• Film shifts from one type of Australian film (family drama) to another (prison film)– The film shifts its style and tempo, which is a

problem of its structure

• Does connect Mei Mei and Dean — both are outsiders– Outsiders is a typical Australian character type.

Problems for China/Aus co-production

• Cast • Language• Rigid requirements of the Australian-China co-

production treaty, making decisions on budget, location, casting and crew according to its rules.

• “Australia is a largely white, Anglo-Saxon society with British sensitivities”

— Pauline Chan

“For the Chinese market the hero’s journey is very important. It promises action and suspense. The Australian angle is the opposite. Our (Australian) distributors and producers are interested in the little girl coming to look for her sponsor. They’re interested in a warmhearted story about a little girl looking for a father”

— Pauline Chan

Positives of co-production

• Increases financing options not only by bringing new producers on board, but also by tapping into 2 (or more) sets of government investment incentives. – It can lower production costs by accessing lower costs,

or lower currency, production elements. • Raise overall budget (average cost of non co-

production is $5m; average cost of co-production is $10m)

• Increases the marketing opportunities.

• America has opened its doors to more distribution of Chinese films (in the hope that such favours will be returned).

• This means that Aus-China Co-productions are more likely to find an American distribution on the back of being a ‘Chinese film’.

What is a Chinese

• Aus-China co-production must show that they are sufficiently Australian and sufficiently Chinese

• A film classified as ‘foreign’ is liable to the quota restrictions placed on the distribution of foreign films (only 20 films per year)

• “Australia needs China. China does not need Australia”.

— Pauline Chan

• What lengths should Australia go to de-nationalise its films — to reach this Chinese market?

33 Postcards Bait

Australian stars• One way around this de-

nationalisation is through stars• Australian stars in Hollywood

gives them global international appeal — meaning they come to represent both Australia and America.

• Guy Pearce has international appeal without the film having to de-nationalise its Australianness.

• Oddly no Chinese stars appear in the film

Shooting

• It was filmed over 4 weeks in Sydney and 1 week in China.

• “The Australian government is more unbending, rigid and demanding than the Chinese government. In China the director was seen as the creative voice and its government was happy to bend the rules to make the coproduction go ahead. In Australia, money had to be spent on bringing more Chinese cast and crew to Australia, racking up costs on flights and hotel bills”

— Pauline Chan

“My intention has been to encourage scholars of Australian cinema to consider the diversity of relations that constitute it, and not to be limited to understanding of Australian cinema that simply conform with categories developed by government agencies for their own purposes”

— Ben Goldsmith

“Rather than understanding Australian cinema as a territory, Australian-international cinema is conceived as a space of relations”

— Ben Goldsmith

Release

• Opened on 42 screens in Australia• Opened on 800 in China• $3.2 million budget

• What kinds of stories and aesthetic approaches might be workable as the basis for films that would find audiences in both countries?