The Pursuit of Happiness (1988 film)

The Pursuit of Happiness
Directed by	Martha Ansara
Starring	Anna Gare Peter Hardy Laura Black
Release dates	1988
Country	Australia
Language	English

The Pursuit of Happiness is a 1988 Australian film directed by Martha Ansara.^[1][2]

In the mid 1980s Ansara was involved in the Australian anti-nuclear movement and wanted to make a film about Australia's relationship with the US. She originally intended to make a documentary but then it evolved into a dramatic feature about a married relationship that acted as a paradigm for the US-Australia relationship. Ansara:

It was a bit of a crude analysis, but it took so long to make (under the 10BA system) that by the time we finished the film - it was 1987 - for various reasons, the anti-nuclear movement was on the way out, so the film missed its time. And with films, timing is everything. If we had done it in a year, which we couldn't, it probably would have done very, very well. As it was, it did return 40 percent to the investors, but that was because it was very low-budget. The interesting thing about the film is that, if the audience was not very sophisticated, they liked it enormously. If they were sophisticated, they thought it was really daggy.^[3]

References

1. David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, Pan MacMillan, 1990 p223
2. Anna Grieve, "Question and Ansara", Cinema Papers March 1988 p6-7
3. "Interview with Margaret Ansara", Signet, 7 November 1998 accessed 17 November 2012

External links

• The Pursuit of Happiness at IMDB
• The Pursuit of Happiness at Oz Movies