The Australian film industry is in need of major policy overhaul, according to newly appointed UQ Professor Thomas O’Regan.
Professor O’Regan, who was appointed as the new Chair of Media and Cultural Studies in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History (EMSAH), said the entire cultural and creative industries were in a state of change.
He said the support mechanisms for Australian productions were in need of renovation and needed to be better integrated with the support for international productions.
“With the development of film studios firstly in Brisbane, and then later in Sydney and Melbourne, it has created a film services framework that is often providing parts of or plug-in services to other international film industries,” he said.
“The film services framework needs to be better aligned with existing cultural policy frameworks that’s in place to support the domestic film industry.”
Professor O’Regan said new creative industries policies only partly addressed this issue.
“It’s certainly right that we have needed a policy overhaul for a while, but exactly what that policy overhaul should be and what it should consist of is the question,” he said.
“Should it be that we are no longer just looking at a film policy but at a kind of broader entertainment industry policy that incorporates games?
“Or is it an invitation to continue to see film as its own separate entity?”
Professor O’Regan has come to UQ from Griffith University where he spent four years as the Director of the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy.
He said he was attracted to UQ because of both EMSAH’s diverse interests in the cultural industries and the affiliated research centres in the Faculty.
“I was attracted to the presence of three Faculty centres, the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, the Centre for the History of European Discourses and the Australian Studies Centre because of the excellent leadership that I could work with,” he said.
“UQ’s research intensive environment was also an important consideration.”
Media: For more information, contact Professor Thomas O’Regan (telephone 07 3346 8739, email t.oregan@uq.edu.au) or David Ashkanasy at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 2339).
.jpg)
