EDITORIAL
David Owen:
EDITORIAL
'I think that the role of the artist and the filmmaker and the
writer is to try to define the country that you live in.’
(Andrew Knight, co-creator, SeaChange.) As a job description
its challenging, greatly rewarding. After all, millenia of civilisation
show that making culture outlasts most other endeavours. Unfortunately,
though, Knight’s observation came in a newspaper article on
the wretched state of our TV industry. (Insight, the Age,
July 23, 2005.) Statistics tell the story. Less than a quarter
of our TV is local content, (three quarters in Canada, over ninety
per cent in Britain.) Longtime TV writer-producer Roger Simpson
identifies the key problem as being the ‘hugely underfunded’
ABC. Its Managing Director Russell Balding estimates that the national
broadcaster has suffered a funding loss in real terms of twenty-seven
per cent since 1985. Our feature film industry suffers likewise,
with local box office being four per cent or less. Quality TV drama
isn’t cheap to make, about $500,000 per hour, feature films
considerably more. The book industry has become just as –
dare one use a Howard expression – unAustralian. Sales of
fiction bynew and mid-list local writers is abysmal, not least because
books by new writers are very difficult to find. Again, it’s
not through lack of local talent but because, aside from being largely
deserted by mainstream publishers, the funding required to support
that talent has all but disappeared or been otherwise utilised,
as Rodney Hall’s recent report into the Australia Council
demonstrates. Defining our country, it seems, is no longer very
important – which makes it all the more so.
This issue of Island is as Australian as ever, continuing
to reflect the achievement of 100 issues, while three commended
entries in the 2005 Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize are published.
Issue 102 will feature the winning entry and runners up. It is also
the official magazine of the 2005 Watermark Literary Muster, advertised
within.
Cover:
Mount Roland by Tim Dub |