Sydney City Tour – Koster

On our tour of Sydney, we learned many cinematic and cultural facts through our two tour guides. My favorite of the two, Marty, showed us many locations where films had been made inside of the city. One location that was specifically interesting to me was the government building where scenes from “The Matrix” was filmed. It was interesting to learn that Hollywood recreated the lobby in a studio just to blow it up with explosives. The building was beautiful and full of incredible artwork that many people had questions about. Another movie location I found interesting was where the fountain where “Superman Returns” featured. It was an incredible fountain that I believe the movie didn’t do justice to. After a whole semester of watching films made and based in Australia, it was amazing to see the locations where they were actually filmed. Marty and I had some good chats where he told me about some of his favorite movies like “Inception” and “Interstellar” which I also enjoy. The other tour guide gave us some cultural background early in the tour. Before telling us that Sydney was the first place a feature film was made he made an acknowledgment to country. This was him acknowledging the Aboriginal people that lived on the land before it was turned into what we know today. I found this acknowledgment quite beautiful and it showed me that Australia values their indigenous people after years of oppression. While in class this fall we learned about many of the horrible things that the first European settlers did to the native people. This included enslavement, murder, and judicial injustice for centuries. Films like “Mabo” showed us this in the Fall exactly what this injustice looked like. Land being ripped away from the native people because of loopholes created by an already corrupt system. Needless to say, it was incredibly relieving to see the respect our tour guides have for the Aboriginal people. As a tour came to a close I had a final chat with Marty about what he expects of the Australian film industry. He said he expects great things from the industry and expects Sydney to increase their tax benefits to filmmakers sooner rather than later.

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