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Member LoginCall for Archive Independance
February 2004
Academy Award winning filmmakers, leading Australian actors and internationally respected archivists are calling for the National Film and Sound Archive to become an independent institution.
Over 200 film directors and producers, documentary makers, scriptwriters, educators, film writers, researchers, musicians, composers, historians, producers and technicians have signed a document saying they want to urgently reverse the Australian Film Commission takeover of ScreenSound, the national film and sound archive.
Dr Ina Bertrand, the Deputy Chair of the Archive Forum which has organised the 240 signatures over the past two weeks, says that ScreenSound has lost its autonomy. She wants the AFC to stop the damaging changes it has already begun such as plans to close down the Sydney and Melbourne Archive’s own offices.
“ The AFC should look after the Archive and keep it intact until a new Director is appointed” says the prominent film historian and researcher from Melbourne University.
Signatories include Hollywood based film director Phillip Noyce (Rabbit Proof Fence), President of the Screen Directors’ Association, Don Crombie (Caddie), TV director Ray Argall (MDA), Academy Award nominee Bob Connolly (Rats in the Ranks), Emmy award winning documentary director Mike Rubbo, Berlin Film Festival winner Dennis O’Rourke (Cunnamulla), cartoonist Bruce Petty whose film “Leisure” won an Oscar in 1977, pioneer 60’s new wave director Albie Thoms(GTK) and Sophia Turkiewiecz, director of the immigration classic Silver City.
Australian actors who support the Archive Forum’s call for independence are Geoffrey Rush and Bryan Brown and film producers include Patricia Lovell who made Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli, Anthony Buckley who produced Caddie, Bridget Iken (The Tracker ), Tom Jeffrey, former Chair of the Screen Producers’ Association, Sue Milliken, a former Chair of the AFC, Jill Robb, Deputy Chair of the Film Finance Corporation and producer of Careful he Might Hear You and John Weiley who produced the Imax films The Edge and Antartica.
Other well known names who want the AFC to stop cutting up the Archive are playwright and screenwriter David Williamson, composers Anne Boyd and Peter Sculthorpe, and Suzanne Chauvel Carlsson daughter of famous film pioneers Charles and Elsa Chauvel (Jedda, Forty Thousand Horsemen), Bob Hogg, a consultant who advised Prime Minister Bob Hawke in the 80’s, Akira Isogawa the fashion designer, writer Tom Kenneally, a Booker Prize winner in 1982 for Schindler’s Ark, broadcasters Peter Luck and Caroline Jones, James McCarthy, past President of the Australasian Sound Recordings Association, writers Mary Moody and Eleanor Witcombe who wrote the screenplay of My Brilliant Career and Brett Sheehy, the Sydney Festival Director.
Some of the international archivists who are up in arms about the National Film and Sound Archive takeover are Kevin Brownlow, a British film historian and restorer, Edith Kramer, a Senior Curator at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, Albrecht Haefner, radio archivist at SWR in Germany, Paul Spehr, winner of the AMIA Silver Light Award -the highest honour for an archivist internationally, Sven Allerstrand, the Director of the Swedish Moving Image and Recorded Sound Archive, Dr Paolo Cherchi Usai, Film Archive Director in USA and illustrious French film historian Professor Pierre Sorlin from the Sorbonne.
The statement they all signed up to is:
We who have signed this statement believe that the National Film and Sound Archive must be an independent body and that its integrity and autonomy should be protected by legislation. We recommend that:
1. The National Film and Sound Archive be established as an independent Statutory Authority of the Australian Government;
2. in the meantime, the AFC should act as caretaker of the NFSA and keep it intact as an autonomous entity within the AFC;
3. dismantling of structures already begun be reversed, and no further changes occur until a new Director of the Archive is appointed, and there has been a renewed process of consultation with stakeholders and Government which is proper, expert, open and extensive.
FOR THE FULL LIST OF 236 NAMES WITH DESCRIPTIONS AND TITLES SEE THE ARCHIVE FORUM WEBSITE: www.afiresearch.rmit.edu.au/archiveforum