Screen Australia pushing local films an extra step

Screen Australia is tinkering with its marketing loans as Australian films discover a cinema release can still attract an audience

Kate Winslet and Liam Hemsworth in The Dressmaker, an Australian film receiving a marketing boost from Screen Australia. Supplied by Universal Pictures.

Screen Australia will back three Australian films with marketing loans totalling $1 million as local distributors realise a one-size fits all approach no longer works for exhibition.

The marketing support from the federal agency for current hit Last Cab to Darwin and coming releases Blinky Bill The Movie and Jocelyn Moorhouse’s The Dressmaker, starring Kate Winslet, and the recent My Cinema Premiere initiative by the Independent Cinema Association of Australia, are votes of confidence in the resilience of cinema, said Screen Australia’s Head of Business and Audience, Richard Harris.

“Last year, there was a temptation to say cinema had gone for independent and Australian films,” he says. “There’s no doubt it remains a challenging space for independent films worldwide but the (recent Issues in Film Distribution paper by Screen Australia) did point out to us that cinema, in an era of abundance and infinite content, is an area where you can get still get value from exclusivity. It remains an important place.”

As total box office in Australia will break an all-time record this year, Australian films have not been left behind with Mad Max: Fury Road, The Water Diviner and Paper Planes all performing very strongly. Jeremy Sims’ road movie Last Cab To Darwin is the latest to perform well, earning $3 million in its first two weekends after a broad campaign of premieres in regional areas in an intensive release campaign led by the ICAA.

Harris said changes to Screen Australia’s guidelines for its print and advertising fund (the P & A Plus program), meant it could help broaden the awareness of Australian films at both ends of the spectrum. The marketing boosts are loans, not grants, so international studio Universal Pictures, which has produced and will distribute The Dressmaker, will pay back Screen Australia if it recoups.

“Universal is an international company but they have a risk profile when they’re distributing a film just like anyone else,” Harris said. “They can take it to a certain level but to get it to the next level, where we want to get more eyeballs, we can help. We want to get the box office jump for our films from $2-4 million to $6-8 million and beyond.”

“We’re not putting up free money, it’s not replacing money they would have otherwise spent,” he added.

The path ways to audiences for Australian films have fragmented greatly. The Perth thriller Kill Me Three Times will have an “elevated VOD (video on demand) release” while Cut Snake will attempt a boutique platform release. And the Independent Cinemas Association of Australia was a beneficiary of Screen Australia’s altered Enterprise Industry program when it expanded its marketing and promotion activities to boost Paper Planes earlier this year.