Between Hope and Reality

After two decades of conservative government, the early 1970s ushered in a period of social and cultural progress, with arts at the forefront of this transformation. The Government Film Unit, supported by generous government funding and now rebranded as Film Australia, was tasked with documenting the changing face of the nation.

The films made in these years were inspired by a desire to show Australians sharing their lives on screen in a new culture of acceptance and diversity. Cutting edge documentaries like Brad and Jenny sought to normalise homosexuality, years before it was decriminalised in most Australian states. These films' depictions of gay and lesbian people doing everyday things – eating, going out, catching a bus – presented a version of life unencumbered by stigma and shame. It was a vision of what society could become. But these explorations did come with hidden risks of vilification and fear for personal safety, threats that would eventually relegate the film Jenny to archival storage and away from public eyes.

A plethora of other films serve to highlight the tensions between the government's progressive aspirations and the public's embracement of change. A Voice To Be Heard brims with optimism as it tells the story of the Aboriginal Consultative Committee, the first time that Aboriginal people were elected to a body that could represent their interests in Federal Parliament. We see how that excitement was soon tarnished by the disappointment that no one was really listening.

Likewise, migrant stories like Migrant Women, Ford Riot, and Robin show a society that was not as inclusive, not as rewarding, and not as inviting as the Immigration Department's marketing had promised. Whitlam's dismissal in 1975 and Labor's subsequent landslide election loss suggested that social change might have been happening faster than many people were prepared for. Activists were worried that hard-won reforms might never be achieved again and many public servant filmmakers, fearing the same, were spurred on to make bold and boundary-pushing films – while they still could.