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tone and ideology from unit “films latter” ’ (p. 35). The establishment of the ANFB, Film Australia, and the Australian Film Commission were part of the government’s project to facilitate Australian national and cultural development. The making of films could be influenced by the ideology and consciousness of the dominant elites and ruling classes in the name of national interests. White (1992) argued,
Jarvie (2000) echoed this point, stating, ‘National cinema as nation-builder, then, was a project to socialise newly emancipated populations away from radicalism and towards acceptance of the mores, outlook, and continuing hegemony of the governing and cultural elites’ (p. 81). It was under the elitist and capitalist ideology that modernisation, urbanisation, and industrialisation acted for the national good, became the dominant themes in representing Australia, and were therefore associated with the meaning of ‘national identity’. The Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP) and Shell companies even made films of their own to promote the ideology of economic development, depicting Australia as a paradise for migrant workers.3 This creation of Australia as a migrant destination in films showed the affiliations with national interests. It was under the imperative of ‘national interest’ that the ‘consensus construction’ of the post-war migration documentary films was formulated.
Government film commissioners, producers, and filmmakers were in a strategic position in the orientation of the development of genres, content, and other forms in film. Hawes was the single most powerful figure of the Film Unit of ANFB in the period of his tenure. Hawes’s influence cannot be ignored when studying the direction of nationalistic constructions of Australian documentary films. The classical, generalist perspectives of