Cracks in the Facade

In the 1970s Australian governments under LNP Prime Ministers John Gorton and Billy McMahon relayed perfect images of the country to foreign nations.

Australia was a land of beaches, opportunities, aspiration and relaxation. The long-forgotten Commonwealth Film Unit, later known as Film Australia, was bestowed with the task of filming what amounted to propaganda. Public servants filmed a "portrait of Australia" seen on screens such as Expo '70 in Japan, with cameras in the hands of white males.

New SBS documentary Australia: An Unofficial History is but one perspective on the 1970s, drawing upon rarely seen clips from the Unit, made available by the National Film and Sound Archive, and narrated by Jacki Weaver.

Weaver was a rising star in the 1970s, winning her first Logie for a Nine telemovie Do I Have to Kill My Child? The subject about post-natal depression would be lucky to get a Nine commission in 2025, I suspect. Weaver recalls being proud of the 1976 film, funded by Film Australia and directed by Donald Crombie.

But early 1970s short films from the Commonwealth Film Unit were much different, with bikini clad girls on the beach turning mens' heads, and women in primary colours shopping for casserole pots. Australia. What's not to love?

Alternative perspectives were seen as fringe opinions but as the doco reveals, renegade filmmakers would begin to borrow the same equipment on weekends to tell the stories they wanted to tell.

Together with new movements in the community, railing against expectations, other voices began being heard.

This included First Nations protests, including the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra caught on film. Filmmaker Ian Dunlop went to Yolongu to invite elders to tell their story in a film on land rights.

There were protests about Australian involvement in the Vietnam War.

The Women's Liberation movement would begin to air views about abortion and domestic violence.

Gay Liberation would see activist Dennis Altman famously appearing on ABC's Monday Conference (ok it wasn't a Film Australia product).

By the time Gough Whitlam swept into power in 1972 on the back of the "It's Time" campaign, multiculturalism was the buzzword, with Al Grassby becoming Minister for Immigration and ending a White Australia policy. Under Whitlam, the government would also back the Arts and use Film Australia to create empathy around important social topics.

Looking back on these time capsule clips are a range of mostly Gen X and Gen Y commentators including Benjamin Law, Zoë Coombs Marr, Jan Fran and Leila Gurruwiwi. They can barely believe their eyes at the vision they are seeing, and who can blame them?

But there are also veterans who were there including filmmakers Rod Freeman and Deborah Kingsland, former CEO of Film Australia Bruce Moir, legendary activist Gary Foley, Women's Lib author Biff Ward, actor Rachael Maza, and iconic director Phillip Noyce while Historian Michelle Arrow also brings perspective to the narrative.

By the mid 1970s Australia was telling a more layered and more splintered version of who it was.

This begs the question, have we fulfilled the work of those early champions of social change, have we kept the flames brightly burning or gravitated to other concepts?

And heaven forbid, what will they think of the work produced now when they look back on us in 2075?