What Now for the Australian Cinema?- James Ricketson suggests directions (2) - Comments received on GATEKEEPERS

Poster for Blackfellas (James Ricketson
Australia, 1993)

NOTE: This is the second of a series of pieces composed by filmmaker James Ricketson. The first titled GATEKEEPERS was published here“

James has followed up the piece above with this summary by summa rising the comments posted on Facebook following publication.

James  writes: The comments made so far are worth commenting on. They raise more questions than they answer, which was one of the purposes of my original post.

Several filmmakers have contacted me privately to say they agree with lots of what I wrote but don't feel comfortable saying so publicly while they have projects before funding bodies. Whether or not their fear of being blacklisted is justified, the fact that experienced filmmakers feel this way is not healthy. It should be possible to constructively criticise the organisations dispensing public money without fearing that doing so might damage our careers.

One comment raises an excellent question about what we mean by "development". How fully developed must a project already be before it qualifies for development funding? Some films emerge through research, improvisation, workshops and encounters with real people. If applicants must know precisely where the journey will take them before receiving development funding, what exactly is being developed?

Another contributor has reminded me not to romanticise the old face-to-face assessment system. She was rejected from AFTRS partly because two male assessors decided that, as a single mother, she couldn't afford to attend. Human beings bring intuition, imagination and enthusiasm to assessment processes, but they can also bring prejudice, favouritism and unconscious bias.

I am not suggesting that we turn the clock back 50 years. The challenge is to find a hybrid: retaining the fairness and accountability that contemporary assessment procedures are intended to provide while restoring something of the face-to-face human encounters that have been lost.

My own filmmaking career illustrates why I think this matters.

In 1971 I applied for $300 to make my first film. I had no filmmaking experience, no credits and no screenplay — merely a paragraph describing a film I wanted to make with non-professional actors in a retirement home. Two assessors wanted to reject me. The third, Dick Mason, met me, trusted his gut and persuaded the others to take a risk.

That $300 changed my life.

This is also why arguments about whether Young Einstein was a good or bad film miss the point. It wasn't my cup of tea either. But audiences loved it. An assessor's job cannot simply be to ask, "Do I like this?" The more pertinent and difficult question is: "Is there something here that somebody else might love?"

No assessment system can contain a box marked: MAY CAPTURE THE ZEITGEIST THREE YEARS FROM NOW.

Creative funding necessarily involves risk. If we devise assessment systems designed to minimise risk, we shouldn't be surprised when the films that emerge from them are themselves risk-averse.

The question, then, isn't whether we should return to the way things were.

It is: How can we devise a fair and accountable assessment system that still leaves room for eccentricity, intuition, risk, the unconventional filmmaker — and the occasional crazy idea that looks hopeless on paper but comes alive when you meet the person who wants to make it?

I have my own ideas, but I am only one filmmaker. There are many with different ideas to my own.

For discussion, dialogue and debate.