Not Quite Hollywood, by Mark Hartley

Not Quite Hollywood was a very interesting documentary to understand Australian cinema and its evolution over time. Each different genre were presented by people who were directly involved in the making of such films, making each story feel more real and confidential.

The documentary begins explaining the presence of sex in Australian movies. It was quite unexpected to realize that the kind of sex scenes that are shown in today’s porn movies were normal around the 60s and 70s. The artistic movements of this specific period are very intriguing for me since they echoed the determination of young people to push boundaries in order to generate change. Seeing nudity under such light, thus, provides a completely different interpretation of a simplistic porn movie. Rather than a sole sexual object, the naked body became the representation of society’s desire and need of stripping off norms, rules, war, and repression. I thought it was very interesting to see female actresses talk about such period with a certain pride since my first reaction was thinking they were being objectified for the pleasure of the male audience. It was also interesting the evolution of their thoughts and feelings about exposing themselves in front of cameras and audiences. They went from feeling proud of their nudity to feeling that the main object of rebellion had being diluted in the process.

Another interesting aspect that was shown in this documentary about Australian cinema was the way that directors and producers went against rules to make their movies. They would film very dangerous scenes such as motorcycles jumping off cliffs without any precaution or permit. I feel that nowadays we take for granted dangerous scenes as being made with special effects and computers. It is thus very shocking to realize that the dangerous scenes of many of those Australian films were actually real.