Promoting Australia: post-war documentary and Asia

The Colombo Plan is a foreign relations agreement that has had a singularly significant impact on Australian diplomacy and the nation s political image in the Asian region since the early 1950s. This article examines the promotion of the Colombo Plan by focusing on a handful of documentaries that were produced by government bodies, according to different requirements, representing the Colombo Plan s aims and ideals for an international audience. It contextualizes this film in relation to the stylistic and industrial conditions of documentary production of the time and the diverse political sensibilities of post-war Australia. Not least amongst these is unease about the maintenance of the White Australia policy, also known as the Immigration Restriction Act. This article seeks to examine how, given their historical context, these documentaries express a narrative about Asia and Australia.