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Film and Nation-Building: Grierson’s Legacy
John Heyer, a famous Australian producer in the 1950s, commented on Australians’ effort to build a new nation and to make the country known to others by documenting themselves:
Jakubowicz et al. (1994) argued that defining national identities for Australia has historically been ‘the task of historians, the literary and artistic world, and most important, the mass media’ (p. 53). Documentary films were the most influential moving images before television was invented. In the post-war era, the Australian government took advice from Grierson, followed his principles of documentary ideas, and established film boards/film units to produce many ‘nation-building’ films with the aim of promoting Australian images to the world.
Many Australian post-war migration documentary films, such as The New Ipswich (1947), The Steelworker (1956), and Steel Cities of Australia (1964), shared characteristics with Grierson’s classic work Industrial Britain (1931). This 22-minute documentary film was produced by the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit in the U.K., with Grierson as the chief producer and editor. In Industrial Britain, a progressive and modernising goal was clearly developed, with a reference to glass, mining, and steel industries. It was a typical ‘classic documentary’ film with a style of voice-over exposition that aimed to promote national development.
In its time, this documentary film, on the one hand, ‘served the purpose of social propaganda’ to bolster the morale of industry in a time of