In the second half of the 70's, Australian government filmmaking was on a high – so much so that an animated public information campaign won an Oscar! A wave of feminism was sweeping more women into workplaces, including the Film Australia studios. With women behind the camera, the portrayal of life in the suburbs changed, with films like All In The Same Boat and Do I Have To Kill My Child unveiling stories of Valium-suppressed discontent that were a far cry from earlier depictions of domestic bliss.
The Black Theatre movement was challenging cliches and stereotypes of Indigenous Australians. First Nations creatives increasingly embraced film as part of an activist's toolkit, often using humour, satire and ridicule as political weapons.
Gay activists trained their cameras on provocative content to nudge at complacency about representation and equity, explicitly inviting public conversations even through film titles themselves: Homosexuality – A Film For Discussion. And, when cameras were placed in the hands of civil and social right activists, they captured the misdeeds of the oppressors as much as the misfortunes of the oppressed.
As the influx of migrants continued to change the makeup of Australian society, there was growing interest in telling their stories on film. Initially, these were made by non-migrant filmmakers with a top-down approach. But as the decade wore on, migrant communities were becoming more confident to speak with their own voices, and the Government embraced the spirit of collaboration by establishing the Special Broadcasting Services, or SBS.
At the close of the 1970s a decade of intense change for Australia, the ‘official' vision of the country was much more colourful, complicated and diverse than it had been at the beginning, the vision of the country and the country itself had changed forever and laid the foundations for the Australia we experience today.
