Gillian Armstrong has directed large-scale productions in Hollywood and low budget movies in her home country Australia.
	- Filmography of Gillian Armstrong - Australian Cinema

Women Search for Their Identity in Gillian Armstrong's Movies

When Gillian Armstrong started her studies in the Australian Film and Television School in Sydney, she had not given any thought to becoming a director. Women just did not direct films in Australia.

However, she was carrying out her studies at a time when the Australian film industry was being strongly subsidized. The newly founded feministic association Women in Film and Television NSW was putting pressure on the government, demanding that women's films should be separately funded. They also organized seminars where women were able to screen their films.

Portrayer of Independent Women

Armstrong admits that she is indebted to the feminist groups, but as she often repeats in interviews, she is not politically active herself. Even though her films are not enunciatingly feministic, they do defend women's rights to have a career of their own. The heroines are independent women who have to fight in order to have a career.

After graduating from the Film and Television School, Armstrong applied for a job at the Australian Broadcasting Commission, ABC. “How fast can you type,” was one of the questions she was asked in the job interview, whereas her friends, who were male students from the same school, were questioned about their cinematographic skills. However, the producer Margare Flink, being a woman herself, did not think that womanhood was an obstacle. She chose Armstrong to direct the film My Brilliant Career, and thus Armstrong became the first Australian woman to direct a feature film since 1933.

My Brilliant Life was completed in 1979 and it attracted a lot of attention. The film tells the life story of a young woman making her own independent choices in turn-of-the-century Australia. This same theme was taken up in 1994, in Armstrong's adaptation of Louisa M. Alcott's classic novel Little Women.

My Brilliant Career was an exceptional movie because it did not end after the hero and the heroine found each other. Armstrong was even pressured to change the end because it was feared that female viewers might not patronize the film. In the end, the film became quite unexpectedly a success.

Society and Women's Rights

Armstrong described society with her short films in the beginning and in the middle of 1970s. The Roofs Moving is a satirical account of a suburban family. One Hundred a Day tells the story of a young girl who works in a shoe factory in Sydney, and who has had an illegal abortion. Satdee Night is a description of a young gay man. The Singer and the Dancer portrays the friendship between two women: one young, one aged. Their men, of whom they are socially dependent, are battering both.

In 1975 Armstrong made the documentary film Smokes and Lollies, which featured three 14-year-old girls. Five years later she filmed its sequel, Fourteen's Good, Eighteen's Better, and in 1988, she shot the third episode of the trilogy, Bingo, Bridesmaids and Braces.

Armstrong's feature films can be separated into two different kinds of films. In Hollywood, she has directed such films as Mrs. Soffel and Little Women; in Australia, small budget films such as The Last Days of Chez Nous and High Tide, both with their dysfunctional families, and the after-punk musical Starstruck.

One Hundred a Day at Pakkahuone on Thu 7 March 2002 at 5 pm

TEXT: Henna lehtinen
TRANSLATION: Laura Katajisto
PHOTO: Finnish Film Archive
UPDATED: Wednesday, 13-Mar-2002 09:37:35 EET

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