This document discusses the challenges and opportunities of the Australia-China co-production 33 Postcards. It notes that the film tells an international story through a Chinese lens, exploring Australia and multiculturalism from the perspective of a Chinese character. However, meeting the requirements of both countries' film industries created challenges around budget, casting, and storytelling conventions. Ultimately, co-productions may increase financing and marketing opportunities by tapping multiple government incentives and opening works to larger audiences internationally.

1. 33 Postcards: China and Australia
Lecture 3
Australian Cinema, RMIT University, COMM1033
Dr Steve Gaunson
stephen.gaunson@rmit.edu.au

2. International perspectives
• Australia is represented through a Chinese lens.
– Multicultural experience
• Director: Pauline Chan — international director
– Born in Vietnam; Chinese parents; completed her education in Hong
Kong; studied cinema in America; moved to Australia in the 1980s.
• Character: Mei Mei — Chinese girl looking at Australia through her
cultural gaze.
• Link to Finding Nemo
“Prospect of being able to write, direct, and produce a film that could
reach an international audience”.
— Pauline Chan

3. Breaking down myths
Dean (Guy Pearce) represents himself as the stereotypical Aussie male
• Park ranger
• Family man
• Australia is a mythically exotic land
– Reality is much darker
– The film exposes a dark underbelly of Sydney
• Is this a positive representation of Australia for China?
• Think of the difference to Australia projecting itself for the
international.

4. • Film shifts from one type of Australian film
(family drama) to another (prison film)
– The film shifts its style and tempo, which is a
problem of its structure
• Does connect Mei Mei and Dean — both are
outsiders
– Outsiders is a typical Australian character type.

5. Problems for China/Aus co-production
• Cast
• Language
• Rigid requirements of the Australian-China co-
production treaty, making decisions on
budget, location, casting and crew according
to its rules.
• “Australia is a largely white, Anglo-Saxon
society with British sensitivities”
— Pauline Chan

6. “For the Chinese market the hero’s journey is
very important. It promises action and suspense.
The Australian angle is the opposite. Our
(Australian) distributors and producers are
interested in the little girl coming to look for her
sponsor. They’re interested in a warmhearted
story about a little girl looking for a father”
— Pauline Chan

7. Positives of co-production
• Increases financing options not only by bringing
new producers on board, but also by tapping into
2 (or more) sets of government investment
incentives.
– It can lower production costs by accessing lower costs,
or lower currency, production elements.
• Raise overall budget (average cost of non co-
production is $5m; average cost of co-production
is $10m)
• Increases the marketing opportunities.

8. • America has opened its doors to more
distribution of Chinese films (in the hope that
such favours will be returned).
• This means that Aus-China Co-productions are
more likely to find an American distribution on
the back of being a ‘Chinese film’.

9. What is a Chinese
• Aus-China co-production must show that they
are sufficiently Australian and sufficiently
Chinese
• A film classified as ‘foreign’ is liable to the
quota restrictions placed on the distribution
of foreign films (only 20 films per year)

10. • “Australia needs China. China does not need
Australia”.
— Pauline Chan
• What lengths should Australia go to de-
nationalise its films — to reach this Chinese
market?

11. 33 Postcards Bait

12. Australian stars
• One way around this de-
nationalisation is through stars
• Australian stars in Hollywood
gives them global international
appeal — meaning they come
to represent both Australia
and America.
• Guy Pearce has international
appeal without the film having
to de-nationalise its
Australianness.
• Oddly no Chinese stars appear
in the film

13. Shooting
• It was filmed over 4 weeks in Sydney and 1 week
in China.
• “The Australian government is more unbending,
rigid and demanding than the Chinese
government. In China the director was seen as
the creative voice and its government was happy
to bend the rules to make the coproduction go
ahead. In Australia, money had to be spent on
bringing more Chinese cast and crew to Australia,
racking up costs on flights and hotel bills”
— Pauline Chan

14. “My intention has been to encourage scholars of
Australian cinema to consider the diversity of relations
that constitute it, and not to be limited to understanding
of Australian cinema that simply conform with categories
developed by government agencies for their own
purposes”
— Ben Goldsmith
“Rather than understanding Australian cinema as a
territory, Australian-international cinema is conceived as
a space of relations”
— Ben Goldsmith

15. Release
• Opened on 42 screens in Australia
• Opened on 800 in China
• $3.2 million budget
• What kinds of stories and aesthetic
approaches might be workable as the basis for
films that would find audiences in both
countries?