Australian Film Commission (AFC) Genre Collection

Full description

In 1988 film academics Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka published a two volume book on the history of Australian cinema titled The Screening of Australia: anatomy of a film industry. Within the 2nd volume they examine the fertile period of Australian cinema from 1970 to 1987 in close detail. One method used to try and examine the films of the era was to group the films into different categories (there seems to be some cross-pollination of the categories as well). One of the categories used was titled the AFC (Australian Film Commission) Genre, a term recognised amongst Australian film academics to represent a certain kind of Australian film. Dermody and Jacka argue that the films of this "AFC Genre" were ones that came to characterise worthy investment by the AFC, films "we could be proud of", and that while their grouping of the AFC Genre doesn't isn't the largest nor the most commercially successful films, they have tended to be the most citable, the ones deemed most worthy, that have earned honourable mention (if not glory) for Australia as a fledgling film culture. The AFC Genre collection includes holdings within the AFI Research Collection that discuss the AFC Genre films as listed by Dermody and Jacka. The items include clippings files, books, book chapters, journal articles, scripts, publicity and ephemera.