'Is Happiness Festival-shaped Any Longer?': The Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals and the Growth of Australian Film Culture 1973-1977

This is the fourth in a series of papers discussing the history of the Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals. Three of our previous papers examined the period from the Festivals’ emergence in 1952 and 1954 respectively, through their development and growth to 1972. [1] This paper continues the broader historical narrative and deals with the period from 1973 to 1977. It also retains the key premise of our previous papers that the history of both Festivals can be understood as “involving a continuous negotiation between the demands of ‘culture’ and the demands of ‘industry’“.