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Therefore, the ANFB was set up to take the leading role in creating and exchanging information for both domestic and international audiences—to implement communication among Australian states and people as well as to recruit more immigrants from overseas, especially from Britain. The Film Division of the Department of Information, on the other hand, was the film production unit of the Board actually involved in filmmaking and dissemination of information to the public. The role of the Department of Information in handling film affairs, as well as the orientation, structure, and institutional design of the CFU, was largely inspired by Grierson’s ideas. The Department of Information followed Grierson’s principles in treating documentary films as a nation-building medium.
National Interests, Classical Documentary,
and Propaganda
A nation state can be sometimes treated as a relatively independent, autonomous totality that pursues its own interests. Turner (1994) observed the nation’s role in promoting films and popular culture in Australia and argued:
Prior to the establishment of the ANFB, the Commonwealth Cinema and Photographic Branch of the Department of Agriculture had existed since 1921. Its aim was to ‘promote immigration and generally publicise at home and abroad’ (D. Williams, 2008, p. 101). In the post-war era, a fully established film unit was in great demand in order to strengthen national cohesion and to handle migration publicity. Moran (1991) pointed out that most films produced by the film unit of the ANFB in the period from 1945 to 1953 were ‘unified around the subject of building the nation’ and ‘they are nationalist in a particular way that makes them different in