Discusses Finding Nemo in the context of an Australian film.

1. Finding Nemo
Dr Steve Gaunson
Lecture

2. Val Morgan survey results
Many people also struggled to identify Australian content correctly, with some people
naming films, television programmes or documentaries with only a tenuous relationship
to Australia (such as having an Australian cast member, rather than being an Australian
production). Table 1 (below) shows some examples of feature films/television programmes
that were incorrectly nominated as Australian.
Feature films nominated as “Australian” content1
• The Titans
• Avatar
• Up In Smoke
• The Lovely Bones
• Romeo and Juliet
• Hair Spray
• It Might Get Loud
• Matrix
• Twilight
• Finding Nemo
• Time Traveler’s Wife
• Nim’s Island

3. Questions to consider
• What happens if we consider Finding Nemo an
Australian film?
• What resonance does this film have with an
Australian audience?
What makes an Australian film?
• “The notion of resonance of a particular text
with an Australian audience” — Elizabeth
Avram

4. Why Finding Nemo is different
• Mission Impossible II (John Woo 2000)
• Scooby-Doo (Raja Gosnell 2002)
• Finding Nemo — profoundly engages with
Australia as place (more than just space)

5. Resonance with Australia
Brokeback Mountain Stoker

7. The Railway Man The Rocket

8. “With the acceleration of globalization, Australian
audiences experience of cinema as ‘Australian’ has
shifted beyond the textual into complex
relationships between a film and its context in the
entire milieu of filmmaking”
— Elizabeth Avram
BUT THEREFORE, surely we need to rethink how we
define an Australian film.
Australian films must be considered both within
and outside of Australia.

9. The problem of only Australians
making ‘Australian films’
• Everything becomes inward, not outward
• It limits how Australia is placed within the
world
• It sets up an ugly spiral: If only Australians
make Australian cinema, then, can only
Australians understand something as
‘Australian’

10. The point of this week — and course in
general
• Move from defining what an Australian film
should be — to understanding what Australian
cinema actually does.
• Films need to be understood through the
following ways:
– Production
– Reception
– Textuality

11. Finding Nemo
• To call this a purely Hollywood film is as problematic as
calling it a purely Australian film.
• All of the research took place in Sydney and the Great
Barrier Reef
• Director also watched a backlog of Australian films
• The casting includes many prominent Australian actors (Eric
Bana, Barry Humphries, Geoffrey Rush, Bill Hunter)
• The film features easily identifiable Australian landscapes
• The film made $8 million in its opening Australian weekend
• Hugely positive reviews both in Australian and America

12. “By analysing Finding Nemo from ‘our side of
the fence’ we can gain some insight into how we
see ourselves in a global community”
— Elizabeth Avram
This is not to dismiss the concept of national
cinema but rethink the wider ways that national
cinema can be considered and globally
understood