AFI: turns fifty without a wrinkle
Published on Screen Hub
Wednesday 3 December, 2008

As you polish your shoes, pick up your tux from the dry-cleaners and make ready for this years AFI Awards, take a moment to ponder that it’s the fiftieth year of the AFIs – that’s right, the AFI is turning 50.

In this fluky, precarious, capricious industry to last a decade is amazing, to turn 21 incredible and 30 unheard of, so for the Australian Film Institute to have survived for fifty years is nothing short of breathtaking.

In 2008, when nobody seems quite certain whether ours is a cottage industry, a basket case or a viable billion-dollar business, it is reassuring that one film institution at least has lasted through the ups and downs.

The AFI began as a way of facilitation the importation of films from overseas so that Australia’s film buff community could see them, and that is why they chose such a grand-sounding moniker as the Australian Film Institute. The AFI’s first Chair, Frank Nicholls, still attends the cinema once a week at the age of 92.

For the first couple of decades the AFI was joined at the hip to the Melbourne Film Festival, and Erwin Rado, who once sat on the knee of Marlene Dietrich, was the director of both. In the 60s the AFI Board of governors included film critic Colin Bennett, Barry Jones and Phillip Adams, who were instrumental in lobbying incoming Prime Minister Gorton to support the local industry. Gorton was invited to the 1969 AFIs where he announced that funds would begin to flow to the fledgling industry; thus as Jones succinctly described it, the industry was ‘revived, or rather exhumed from the dead.’

In the early 70s the AFI actually operated as an arm of the Government in handing out money to new filmmakers like Fred Schepisi, Scott Hicks, Glenys Rowe and Peter Weir to produce shorts and experimental films. Apparently the Government wanted a respectable institution to dole out the funds, not one of those left-leaning groups like the Melbourne and Sydney Film Co-ops. And to make sure those pesky filmmakers didn’t divert the dosh to such frivolities as food, the AFI provided vouchers instead of cash that could be redeemed for film stock and processing at the lab.

AFI Patron Dr George Miller recalls that during the seventies the AFI Awards consisted of people rocking up to the ceremony in tee-shirts and jeans, a fantastic contrast to events like the Academy Awards. “We were all a bunch of really passionate amateurs driven by our love of the cinema.”

When partner Byron Kennedy died in a helicopter crash, Miller set up the Byron Kennedy Award to honour people who were unorthodox and visionary as well as excellent, and recipients have included Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin, Jill Bilcock, John Hargeaves and Laura Jones. In setting up the award Miller sought cash donations from various people he knew, and one who provided funds was Steven Spielberg.

The 80s were the boom years for the AFI, expanding into distribution and exhibition with a chain of cinemas across the nation, including the Longford in Melbourne, the Chauvel in Sydney and the State in Hobart. However it was tricky to provide exposure to our local output and make money at the same time, and if the AFI did make a dollar some distributors would protest about the unfair competition.

Over the years the AFI has weathered its share of controversies, including a strike of AFI employees when the then CEO Kathleen Norris was at the helm, a year when the event couldn’t be broadcast due to a technician’s dispute, and embarrassing moments such as when Kerry Armstrong was gonged off stage after winning Best Actress for both Television and Film, for taking too long with her acceptance speech.

Their activities have waxed and waned according to the prevailing fashions, the state of the industry and the savaging by certain Federal agencies, but the AFI stands out as a beacon of Australian screen culture, which has always been its raison d’etre throughout its history. The AFI still maintains a library that is housed at RMIT Library, has a thriving membership base and tours a season of features, documentaries and short films nationally as part of the judging process, as well as staging the awards.

And the awards have certainly come a long way from the days when they were part of the Melbourne Film Festival. Today there are so many awards they are staggered over two nights, one for the industry on Friday, and the main televised event on the Saturday. Produced by the Paul Dainty organization they are glitzy indeed, with superb catering and even a bag of goodies to take home, provided by major sponsor L’Oreal.

So as you press your tux or iron your gladrags, spare a thought for the AFI, and wish it well for the next fifty years.

Mark Poole