AustLit

'Welcome to this special issue on ‘Re-evaluating the Royal Commission into the Australian Moving Picture Industry, 1927–1928’. Although nearly 90 years have passed since that Royal Commission, the concerns it addressed remain relevant today: how to protect the local film industry, and how to regulate the dominance of American movies. It is perhaps this reason as to why researchers, scholars, students and teachers keep returning to the Commission as a way to make sense of the complexities that continue to define the Australian cinema industry.' (Author's introduction)

'The 1927–1928 Commonwealth Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry in Australia followed a series of public inquiries into the Australian cinema. One agenda of the Commission was to examine the dominance of American movies in Australian film exhibition. By concentrating on how the Commission explored this issue, as it related to the exhibition and distribution of Hollywood movies in Australia, here I will consider the extent to which Australian exhibition has been guided by and dependent on American movies. With the Commission established, in part, to explore the accusation of an American combine ruling the exhibition industry, and stunting the local production sector, the real question was whether the Commissioners would be persuaded to make recommendations to wrest the powers from America, and consequently redirect the local exhibition industry's dependence on Hollywood movies.' (Publication abstract)

'The 1927–1928 Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry in Australia sought to strengthen the domestic film industry's competitiveness against foreign investment, technology and manpower. Although it concluded before the wide-scale rollout of sound exhibition, it began collecting evidence after the coming of sound had already begun to make waves. Beginning in 1924 and continuing beyond the Commission, agents of the US De Forest Phonofilms company, primed the local market for sound through a series of publicity events. Their activities lead the local trade press to dub the Australian Phonofilms franchise as the instigator of a ‘Talkie War’, challenging the Commission's ability to curtail the expansion of human capital and technology from the USA. Within a year of its conclusion, agents from the US Western Electric company arrived in Australia to wire the major capital city theatres with sound. Initially, this strengthened Hollywood's foothold in ways that the Commission was anxious to avoid. Hoyts Theatres intensified the ‘Talkie-gear war’ by backing the ‘Australian-made’ Markophone as a competitor to the US Fox–Movietone sound system. Hence, while the Commission failed to achieve its aims, local pioneers took action by innovating rival sound systems with local technology, engineering and showmanship. Markophone wired up the ‘Talkie War’ in face of local and international competition in ways that differed from nearly all alternative sound systems.' (Publication abstract)

'In adopting the perspective of the New Cinema History movement, which endeavours to shift the focus of film history away from questions of texts and their production, this article provides an overview of the Royal Commission that concentrates on the central place of exhibition within the Australian film industry. The two areas of enquiry here concern the relation of exhibitors to distributors and to audiences. This assumes that exhibition operates as a hinge point in national cinema, connecting local audiences with global distribution companies. The first part of the article examines the nature of distribution contracts and the ways in which exhibitors competed against each other, rather than simply seeing them as struggling with Hollywood. The second part foregrounds testimony given to the Commission concerning the constitution and behaviour of audiences. The article concludes with the proposition that Australian audiences have consistently failed to behave in accordance with certain broadly held social principles and that the role of the Commission was not to stimulate the production sector, but rather to find rhetorical ways of addressing the problems represented by exhibition and audience practices.' (Publication abstract)

'Of all the Australian states, Queensland had the highest number of exhibitors who gave evidence to the Royal Commission, with 22 out of the national total of 53. In Rockhampton, the three exhibitors who gave evidence represented all five cinemas in the town. These exhibitors spoke from the perspective of different exhibition models: the large chain, the family business and the second-run suburban cinema. With brief comparisons to evidence given in other Queensland towns, this study of the Rockhampton exhibitors' submissions reveals the concerns of regional picture-show operators and the likes and dislikes of regional audiences. While exhibitors found much to complain about in the Americans' large-scale, centralised business practices, there was a surprising degree of acceptance, suggesting that further close exploration of the Royal Commission evidence can reveal much about regional Australia's interactions with local, national and global culture.'

'In this article, we investigate the complex relationship between concerns about children and young people's exposure to cinema in 1920s Australia and the use of film in education. In part, the Royal Commission into the Moving Picture Industry in Australia aimed to ‘ascertain the effect and the extent of the power of film upon juveniles’ and Commissioners spoke to educationalists, psychologists, medical professions, police officers and parents to gain insight into the impacts of movies on children. Numerous issues were canvassed in the Commission hearings such as exposure to sexual content, ‘excesses’ in film content, children's inability to concentrate at school following cinema attendance and the influence of cinema on youth crime. While the Commission ultimately suggested it was parents’ role to police children's engagements with cinema, it did make recommendations for restricting children's access to films with inappropriate themes. Meanwhile, the Commission was very positive about film's educational role stating that ‘the advantage to be gained by the use of the cinematograph as an adjunct to educational methods should be assisted in every possible way by the Commonwealth’. We draw on the Commission's minutes of evidence, the Commission report and newspaper articles from the 1920s to the 1940s to argue that the Commission provides valuable insight into the beginnings of the use of screen content in formal schooling, both as a resource across the curriculum and as a specific focus of education through film appreciation and, later, broader forms of media education. The article argues debates about screen entertainment and education rehearsed in the Commission are reflected today as parents, concerned citizens and educators ponder the dangers and potential of new media technologies and media content used by children and young people such as video games, social media and interactive content.' (Publication abstract)

'This article examines the powerful performance of actor Aaron Pedersen in Ivan Sen's 2013 film, Mystery Road, exploring his performance and his role as a key to the cinematic and cultural significance of the film. Through an analysis of pivotal scenes of the film and drawing on a wide range of interviews with director and actor, the article argues that Mystery Road brings a complexity and cultural resonance to the role of an inter-cultural mediator that breaks new ground in Australian cinema. Exploring questions of genre, embodied performance and an aesthetics of sparseness, the article argues that Sen reframes the familiar cultural trope of the Indigenous person ‘caught between two cultures’, rendering that figure as an active bicultural negotiator. The concept of the cinematic body is deployed to explore energetic dimensions of Pedersen's performance. The article argues that the cinematic construction of that energetic connection with spectators relies on a directorial conception of cinema that is flexible, innovative, cinematically ambitious and culturally challenging. The article works from inside the energetic dynamics of performance and its cinematic construction to examine the challenges the film makes to Australian cinema.' (Publication summary)