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Tribute to Great Australians of Screen and Sound

Joan Long (1925-1999)

Biography

Not afraid of tackling difficult social issues, Joan Long is perhaps best remembered for scriptwriting and/or producing films such as Silver City – an insightful look at postwar European migration, and Puberty Blues - a sharp rendition of the alienation felt by young women growing up in Sydney's southern beach suburbs in the 1970s and 1980s.

Joan Long was born Joan Dorothy Boundy, in Victoria in 1925. She began her career in 1948 working as a director and scriptwriter for the Commonwealth Film Unit – an opportunity rarely given to women at that time. After some years raising children she returned to the Film Unit to work full time as a writer. Three of Long's pieces during this period, The Pictures that Moved (1969), The Passionate Industry (1973) and Paddington Lace (1971) received awards from the Australian Writers' Guild. The Pictures that Moved and The Passionate Industry were documentaries about the early days of Australian cinema, and fostered in Long a deep commitment, interest and passion for the Australian film industry and its development.

Still from The Picture Show Man (1976)

Long's first script for a feature film, Caddie (1976), is based on an autobiography by a Sydney barmaid. It explores the struggles experienced by a working class single mother during the depression and was shot in over 40 locations in Sydney. Prized for its attention to period detail, Joan Long and Tony Buckley, who produced the film, drew upon their knowledge of Australian films of the 1920s to create authenticity. The film, which starred Helen Morse, was a huge financial success and won a number of awards at overseas film festivals.

In 1975 Long formed the production company, Limelight Productions. She went on to produce and write The Picture Show Man (1976), which follows Maurice Pym, a travelling cinema operator, as he tours northern NSW. The film was graced with colourful performances by both John Meillon and John Ewart, and again showed Long's keen interest in the history of the film industry in Australia.

Audiences of Joan Long's next production, Puberty Blues (1981), which was co-produced and written by Margaret Kelly, viewed a more contemporary Australia. The southern beach suburbs of Sydney were the setting for a sharp look at life as a teenage girl enscribed in the surf culture of the time. A collection of anecdotes by teenage authors Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey were transformed by Margaret Kelly, Joan Long and director Bruce Beresford into a powerful film in which two young women defy the social norms of their peers and choose not to be dominated by the men of their generation. In reference to the original stories by Lette and Carey, Long wrote ' … what I especially like about them was that they dealt with humour and authenticity about young women growing up; I felt we'd seen enough films about teenage boys'.

In 1984, Long again tackled a sensitive social issue with the production of the feature Silver City. This time, the life of European postwar migrants to Australia was explored – exposing their difficult integration into a new culture; the'silver city' being the name one of the characters gives to the migrant camp, which was made of corrugated steel. Long said of the film '(it) … will take the lid off the migrant camps and show an Australia that most Australians have never seen'.

Emerald City (1989), an adaptation of David Williamson's satirical play about power, corruption and the film industry was Long's last feature film production. Again she expressed her keen interest in the industry in which she was involved.

L-R: John Ewart, Joan Long and John Meillon,
The Picture Show Man (1976)

Joan Long's contribution to the film industry is easily measured by the significance of the films she produced and wrote and the social justice issues she addressed in many of these works. However, she was also active behind the scenes, encouraging the positive growth of the Australian film industry and focusing too on the preservation of Australian film history. A significant player in the movement to establish an institution to preserve Australian films, Joan Long headed the first Advisory Committee for the National Film and Sound Archive in 1984. The Committee played a key role in developing the blueprint for the Archive's future.

Joan Long passed away in January 1999. Her passion for the medium of film, its future and the preservation of its history in Australia, was both selfless and inspiring. Joan Long was honoured with the Ken G. Hall Award, sponsored by the National Film and Sound Archive, for her significant contribution to Australian film preservation in August 1999.

Photographs from the National Film and Sound Archive's Documentation Collection courtesy of Limelight Productions.

Filmography

1951

Our Firemen, director

1952

Our Policemen, director

1952

Let's Look at Railways, director

1952

Richard Takes a Train Ride, director

1953

Rail Town, director, scriptwriter

1953

In Harbour, director

1969

The Pictures that Moved, scriptwriter (documentary)

1971

Paddington Lace, scriptwriter

1973

The Passionate Industry, scriptwriter (documentary)

1976

Caddie, scriptwriter

1977

The Picture Show Man, producer, scriptwriter
(see also the Kodak/Atlab Cinema Collection Entry for this film).

1981

Puberty Blues, co-producer

1984

Silver City, producer

1989

Emerald City, producer

Joan Long worked on numerous other documentaries during her career with the Commonwealth Film Unit (now Film Australia).