Finding Nemo: What is an Australian Film

Finding Nemo

Dr Steve GaunsonLecture

Val Morgan survey resultsMany people also struggled to identify Australian content correctly, with some peoplenaming films, television programmes or documentaries with only a tenuous relationshipto Australia (such as having an Australian cast member, rather than being an Australianproduction). Table 1 (below) shows some examples of feature films/television programmesthat were incorrectly nominated as Australian.Feature films nominated as “Australian” content1• The Titans• Avatar• Up In Smoke• The Lovely Bones• Romeo and Juliet• Hair Spray• It Might Get Loud• Matrix• Twilight• Finding Nemo• Time Traveler’s Wife• Nim’s Island

Questions to consider

• What happens if we consider Finding Nemo an Australian film?

• What resonance does this film have with an Australian audience?

What makes an Australian film?• “The notion of resonance of a particular text

with an Australian audience” — Elizabeth Avram

Why Finding Nemo is different

• Mission Impossible II (John Woo 2000)• Scooby-Doo (Raja Gosnell 2002)• Finding Nemo — profoundly engages with

Australia as place (more than just space)

Resonance with Australia

Brokeback Mountain Stoker

The Railway Man The Rocket

“With the acceleration of globalization, Australian audiences experience of cinema as ‘Australian’ has shifted beyond the textual into complex relationships between a film and its context in the entire milieu of filmmaking”

— Elizabeth Avram

BUT THEREFORE, surely we need to rethink how we define an Australian film.Australian films must be considered both within and outside of Australia.

The problem of only Australians making ‘Australian films’

• Everything becomes inward, not outward• It limits how Australia is placed within the

world• It sets up an ugly spiral: If only Australians

make Australian cinema, then, can only Australians understand something as ‘Australian’

The point of this week — and course in general

• Move from defining what an Australian film should be — to understanding what Australian cinema actually does.

• Films need to be understood through the following ways: – Production– Reception– Textuality

Finding Nemo

• To call this a purely Hollywood film is as problematic as calling it a purely Australian film.

• All of the research took place in Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef

• Director also watched a backlog of Australian films• The casting includes many prominent Australian actors (Eric

Bana, Barry Humphries, Geoffrey Rush, Bill Hunter)• The film features easily identifiable Australian landscapes• The film made $8 million in its opening Australian weekend• Hugely positive reviews both in Australian and America

“By analysing Finding Nemo from ‘our side of the fence’ we can gain some insight into how we see ourselves in a global community”

— Elizabeth Avram

This is not to dismiss the concept of national cinema but rethink the wider ways that national cinema can be considered and globally understood