IF THE health of a country’s film industry were judged solely by the international success of its actors, then the champagne would flow like water in production offices across Australia. In the past decade, this nation has punched far above its weight as a nursery for versatile talents.

Just think of the irresistible rise of Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Russell Crowe, and the emergence of Eric Bana, Guy Pearce, Geoffrey Rush, Hugh Jackman, Heath Ledger, Naomi Watts (see interview), Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths — several of whom feature in the tenth anniversary retrospective at next week’s London Australian Film Festival.

Yet the vast pay cheques and red-carpet treatment enjoyed by the burgeoning Aussie A-list in Hollywood do nothing to alleviate the underlying problems for local film-makers struggling to reach audiences in Sydney and Melbourne. Aussies go to the movies an average of five times a year (compared with around three visits per head in the UK). But the patriotism they display towards their sportsmen and women is in short supply at the multiplex, where Hollywood films are even more dominant than they are here, accounting for around 93 per cent of record-breaking ticket sales in 2003.

In 1994, the box-office market share for Australian films hit a lofty 10 per cent, propelled by the success of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel’s Wedding. Last year’s 3.5 per cent share was the lowest since 1999. It reflected the disappointing audience response to Gregor Jordan’s underrated Ned Kelly, with Heath Ledger as the iconic outlaw, and Jonathan Teplitzky’s crime caper Gettin’ Square (screening on March 6 in the festival’s annual New Feature programme), which could not translate rave reviews into major commercial success.

Only Sue Brooks’s wonderful Japanese Story (March 4 and 13; scheduled for general release here in the summer) did better business than expected. It was helped by winning eight Australian Film Institute Awards (the local Oscars), including Best Actress for Toni Collette, adding yet another subtle characterisation to her CV, as a geologist falling for the Japanese businessman she has to escort on an Outback field trip.

Australians don’t appear to harbour any in-built prejudice against homegrown films, with two thirds of respondents in a recent survey by the funding agency Film Finance Corporation Australia stating that they were willing to support local movies. Yet tens of thousands of young Australians are growing up on a celluloid diet of exclusively American fare.

It’s a depressing thought when one considers the varied crop of intelligent and well- acted movies picked for the Barbican retrospective by a committee of UK-based Australians, including festival patron Cate Blanchett (who is eight months pregnant), actor Noah Taylor (the young David Helfgott in Shine), The Times Editor Robert Thomson and the producers Bruna Papandrea and Marion Pilowsky.

“The past decade has been a really interesting and diverse period and we found it difficult narrowing our list to just ten,” says Papandrea, who produced (but didn’t vote for) one of the least well-known choices, Jonathan Teplitzky’s low-budget love story, Better Than Sex (March 11).

The committee wanted to reflect the wide range of genres and styles tackled by an industry that produces around 30 features annually. So the quirky camp of Muriel’s Wedding and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert rubs shoulders with the relentless tension of Rowan Woods’s The Boys (March 10) which features a terrifying turn from David Wenham (Faramir in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), as a hot-headed, misogynist crook dragging his two brothers down with him on the day he gets out of jail.

Aboriginal Australia is represented by Rachel Perkins’s Radiance (March 6), about three sisters returning home for their mother’s funeral. The committee has also included the Aussie masterpiece of the decade, Ray Lawrence’s criss-crossing ensemble drama, Lantana (March 14). And, given how seldom we see Australian work in British theatres, it’s fascinating to note that Radiance, The Boys and Lantana were all adapted from stage plays.

Brian McFarlane, author of several books on Australian cinema, believes that the country’s recent output “stands up well against any period in our film history, despite the lack of interest from audiences”. It’s a measure of the industry’s breadth and depth that the Barbican committee could have compiled an equally impressive alternate retrospective.

Andrew Dominik’s Chopper (March 12), the gritty and violent biopic about the murderer Mark “Chopper” Read that set Eric Bana on the road to stardom as the Hulk, could have ceded its crime slot to either Gregor Jordan’s supernaturally tinged Two Hands (Heath Ledger’s breakthrough film) or Bill Bennett’s noirish road movie Kiss or Kill, which boasts the first great Aussie femme fatale in Frances O’Connor.

Among Aboriginal stories, Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence and Rolf de Heer’s The Tracker would have been worthy alternatives to Radiance, and while Rob Sitch’s tale of underdogs versus developers The Castle (March 13) waves the flag for local comedy, I would have voted for his even funnier follow-up, The Dish.

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