Today Encore Magazine released their POWER 50, a list they describe as “a select group of screen professionals who have achieved new heights in 2010/2011, whose decisions influence and shape Australia’s audiovisual industry, and whose work has stood out from the crowd.”
The definition is broad, but the name says more to me – it presents as a list of the most powerful people in the Australian industry. Not the most successful , not the most influential, not those most likely to succeed – the most powerful.
Let’s have a look, shall we?
By my calculation, the breakdown is 19 creative to 40 not. Now obviously every job has some degree of creativity in it and most of the people in the industry will have come from creative backgrounds, but I’m talking show as opposed to business. Some of the jobs defied the categories, so I erred on the side of creativity for fairness.
The list is 59 people – 9 are listed as pairs in a single unit, 3 entries are hyphenates listed under multiple disciplines – consisting of 10 producers, 8 CEO’s, 2 Executive Producers, 2 Festival Directors, 5 Executive Directors, 8 Managing Directors, 2 Heads of Programming, a Head of Development, 2 Heads of Indigenous Development, a Network Script Executive, a Controller, a Head of Screen Culture, 15 Directors, 5 Writers, 2 Cinematographers, an Editor and a Medical Doctor. No prizes for guessing who that one is.
Oh yes, and a single actor*. That’s Chris Lilley, representing the entire Australian acting community, and I’d wager he was included more for his writing and producing efforts in bringing Australian work to the international stage.
I understand that the list is solely the view of those at Encore Magazine, and possibly the appearance here that the business overpowers the show just reflects the accepted international norm, but I must admit the lack of actors irks me.
Yes the age of irrational actors winning all sorts of selfish demands is long past and yes actors are often the most celebrated entity of any given project, and perhaps this year there were no Australian performances that fit Encore’s definition, but the way the list reads I, as an actor, feel very much at the mercy of the hand that holds the purse strings.
It doesn’t seem right to me that those with the most power in this industry are not those who can tell the best stories or create the most entertaining content, but those who count the money. If you’re in a position to allow others to practise their creativity, to tick a box and set a project rolling, you’re given more kudos. Is that right?
I know the finding, facilitating and financing of a film project is a mammoth task, I know that plenty of passion is put towards programming and development, and I know that without the business the show wouldn’t be anywhere near as viable. I’m also aware that the congratulations lauded on the creatives are far more publicised and that these 59 people deserve all the praise heaped unto them.
Perhaps what worries me most is the label POWER, and the notion that they have it. The secondary implication is that if they have it, the rest of us want it. Which puts us (the creatives) very much under the control of them (the power). Which is not a nice way of looking at the world.
The very idea that there should be a power in our industry is distasteful to me. I’d rather that we operated as a community, sharing ideas and developing them collaboratively, seeking greater truths in the work we undertake and changing the world with what we achieve.
Power is an interesting ideal, but I think I prefer balance.
*Technically Jeffrey Walker is also an actor but he is listed only for his directing, having left acting after a range of children’s television shows
**This piece was a reaction to Encore Magazine's Power 50
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