AustLit

1. Stunt Director: Peter Armstrong

2. With its screenplay based largely on the Independent Theatre stage production, Stockade was filmed at the Australiana Village at Wilberforce (west of Sydney) a few weeks after the theatrical season closed in May. The shoot took place over two weekends, with most of the original cast and production team involved, including director Ross McGregor (credited as Director of Acting for the film).

3. Stockade was partly financed by two government subsidies. The Australian Council for the Arts contributed $15,000, while the newly formed Australian Film Development Corporation made its first ever investment with $16,000. The total cost of production was something over $90,000.

4. Following its preview screening in Ballarat, local Liberal member Dudley Erwin denounced the film as 'immoral' for its brothel and seduction scenes. Undeterred, Cook and Pomeranz then launched the film themselves at an independent Sydney suburban cinema. Although Stockade received only limited screenings afterwards, it did find a demand through schools for a number of years (in an abidged form), and was eventually also broadcast on ABC television.

5. Critical reception to the film was generally hostile, with several reviewers questioning the wisdom of reproducing the stage version on the big screen. Sylvia Lawson records, for example, that the story not only seemed confusing but that the audience should have been warned that it was to been seen strictly as a substitute for seeing the play. 'It is to be regretted,' she writes, that the producers also 'imagined that a viable film could be made cheaply by taking advantage of an existing set.' In drawing further attention to the problem of having actors directed as though for the stage, she nevertheless noted that Rod Mullinor as Peter Lalor seemed 'potentially splendid' (Australian 14 Dec. 1971, p.10). A review in the Sun Herald agreed with Lawson's view that Stockade was technically uneven and disjointed in terms of its story, but went on to propose the film got better as it went along, eventually becoming 'a technically self-assured exercise with crisp cinematic images, eloquent action sequences and a coherence in which even at first jarring "musicals" inserts have a place' (12 Dec.1971, p.147).

6. Arguably more important that its critical reception was Stockade's strategic importance, as local filmmakers battled government bureaucracy and disinterest in the industry. While growth in filmmaking during the late 1960s and early 1970s was undergoing expansion not matched since the boom period of the 1910s and 1920s, it was still a particularly hard time for independent producers, most of whom struggled to put their films before audiences while state and federal governments continued to favour foreign-owned film interests.

- The subsequent media attention eventually forced then-New South Wales Chief Secretary Eric Willis (1922-1999) to admit that neither he nor his predecessor had enforced the law aimed at fostering the development of an Australian film industry (Sydney Morning Herald 8 December 1971, p. 3). Pomeranz even went so far as to serve the Chief Minister with a writ demanding an inquiry into the film trade's attitude to Australian films. Although Willis was 'moved to the education portfolio soon afterwards', Lumiere reports that his success similarly made no impact in this area (ctd. Shirley and Adams, p. 239).

- Stockade's release helped to draw the public's attention to the restrictive regulations governing the production and exhibition of films in New South Wales, of which Pomeranz and Cook were outspoken critics, continuing to use their film as a focal point for attacks well into 1972. Most contentious were the government's refusal to enforce the quota system and its continued enforcement of regulations that prohibited public screenings in unlicensed halls. This last issue was particularly hard on the industry, because it prevented local filmmakers, many of whom could not get backing from the American-owned distributors, from finding alternative venues to screen their works.

7. Further reference: Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper. Australian Film 1900-1977, A Guide to Feature Film Production (1980), pp. 335-336.