Joan Long

Both The Picture That Moved: Australian Cinema 1896-1920 (1968) and The Passionate Industry: 1920-1930 (1971) were documentaries portraying the evolution of the Australian film industry the movies were a compilation of different excerpts of newsreels, features and photographs of the addressed periods. She also interviewed several actors who played or participated in these pictures.[7][8][9] The two films were chosen to be among the Official Selections (Out of Competition category), at the 30th Cannes Film Festival, in 1977.[10]

She also wrote Paddington Lace (1970), a film that depicts one of Sydney’s oldest suburbs, Paddington, a place that eventually became "Sydney’s artist colony".[11]

Long won an AWGIE Award for each of these three films.[6]

She eventually left the Film Unit and the documentary field in order to pursue the fiction route.[6]

Joan Long wrote the screenplay for Caddie (1976), which was based on the autobiography of Catherine ''Caddie'' Edmond, Caddie, A Sydney Barmaid. The story loosely recounted the life of Caddie Marsh as she desperately tried to hold her life together by getting a job as a barmaid in order to support her two kids, during the Great Depression in Sydney.[12] The film is both a critique of the male-dominated society and its scrutiny on women, and a highlight on the implications of being a working-class single-mother during this period in time.[13][14]

The film was done as part of Australia's participation in the International Women's Year. Caddie (1976) received a total of $390,000 in funding ($50,000 from the government) for its production.[15] The film won 3 feature awards at the 18th Australian Film Institute Awards. Long’s script was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, but lost to Fred Schepisi’s The Devil's Playground.[16]

Joan Long founded the company, Limelight Productions in 1975 and under its name, she continued to tackle subject matters related to the film industry. She started working on a script revolving around the adventure of a picture showman who traveled across the countryside to bring motion pictures to those who could not access them. The screenplay eventually became The Picture Show Man (1977) which she also worked on as producer.[17] Additionally, the film was also her reaction to Caddie, "[she] wanted something light-hearted"[6] that would get her mind away from the heaviness of her previous work.

After The Picture Show Man, Joan Long continued on her path as a producer and worked on various other films, with an emphasis on social justice and gender issues.[4]

She worked as a producer with Margaret Kelly on Puberty Blues (1981), an adaptation of Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey’s book of the same name. The film is a coming of age story that follows two teenage girls in their important life stage. The feature also tackles different themes such as sex, drugs, school, etc.[4][18]

She was involved in Silver City (1984) which was directed and originally written by Sophia Turkiewicz. After having seen the young filmmaker’s previous work Letter from Poland (1978), Long tried to bring one of Turkiewicz's other scripts, written in 1974, to the screen. After several modifications done on the original screenplay, Long decided to bring Australian playwright Tom Keneally on board to help forge a story. Eventually, on their eleventh draft, they got green-lit with a story that depicted the Polish post-war refugees’ journey to Australia, after World War II, focusing on a time that greatly shaped the nation’s current multiculturalism. The film addressed different themes such as identity, assimilation, culture, and ultimately, revolved around the refugees’ relation and interaction with their new home. The film screened throughout Australia, Europe and the United States.[19][20]