Australian Cinema After Mabo

Publisher Description

'Finding Queensland in Australian Cinema' explores gender, race and place in selected Australian films in various phases of Australian cinema: from Charles Chauvel’s 'Jedda' (1955), to the ‘period’ films of the New Wave in the 1970s, to the Indigenous filmmakers since the 1990s, and the contemporary era of transnational productions in Australia.

To date, there has been little sustained attention given to the historical cinema relations between Australia and Asia. This is a significant omission given Australia’s geo-political position and the place Asia has held in the national imaginary, oscillating between threat and opportunity. Many accounts of Australian cinema begin with the 1970s film revival, placing “Asian Australian cinema” within a post-revival schema of multicultural or diasporic cinema and ignoring Asian Australian connections prior to the revival. Transnational Australian Cinema charts a history of Asian Australian cinema, encompassing the work of diasporic Asian filmmakers, films featuring images of Asia and Asians, films produced by Australians working in Asia’s film industries or addressed at Asian audiences, and Asian films that use Australian resources, including locations and personnel. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the book considers diasporic Asian histories, the impact of government immigration and film policies on representation, and the new aesthetic styles and production regimes created by filmmakers who have forged links, both through roots and routes, with Asia. This expanded history of Asian Australian cinema allows for a renewed discussion of so called dormant periods in the nation’s film history. In this respect, the mapping of an expanded history of cinema practices contributes to our broader aim to rethink the transnationalism of Australian cinema.

The Australian Film Revival: 70s, 80s, and Beyond explores the matrix of forces – artistic, cultural, economic, political, governmental, and ideological – that gave rise to, shaped, and sustained this remarkable film movement. This engaging new study brings fresh perspectives, insights, and innovative approaches to a variety of films from a diversity of filmmakers. Areas of focus include the complex and contentious subjects of masculinity, femininity and feminism, the maternal, as well as the Indigenous road film and the protean Australian gothic. During the formative years of the revival, Australian films seemed to emerge from out of the blue in terms of global film history, with many features including Picnic at Hanging Rock (l975), Caddie (l976), The Last Wave (l977), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (l978), and My Brilliant Career (l979) receiving international distribution and enthusiastic critical acclaim with strong box office results. By the time the film revival was in full swing, not only did Australian audiences flock to theaters to see “homegrown” films, but the quantity of Australian films on overseas screens was so high that ardent critics declared this outpouring an Australian “New Wave.” The eyes of the world had turned to a compelling and largely unknown culture.

Australian Genre Film interrogates key genres at the core of Australia’s so-called new golden age of genre cinema, establishing the foundation on which more sustained research on film genre in Australian cinema can develop. The book examines what characterises Australian cinema and its output in this new golden age, as contributors ask to what extent Australian genre film draws on widely understood (and largely Hollywood-based) conventions, as compared to culturally specific conventions of genre storytelling. As such, this book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of Australian genre film, undertaken through original analyses of 13 significant Australian genres: action, biopics, comedy, crime, horror, musical, road movie, romance, science fiction, teen, thriller, war, and the Western. This book will be a cornerstone work for the burgeoning field of Australian film genre studies and a must-read for academics; researchers; undergraduate students; postgraduate students; and general readers interested in film studies, media studies, cultural studies, Australian studies, and sociology.

The first comprehensive volume of original essays on Australian screen culture in the twenty-first century. A Companion to Australian Cinema is an anthology of original essays by new and established authors on the contemporary state and future directions of a well-established national cinema. A timely intervention that challenges and expands the idea of cinema, this book brings into sharp focus those facets of Australian cinema that have endured, evolved and emerged in the twenty-first century. The essays address six thematically-organized propositions – that Australian cinema is an Indigenous screen culture, an international cinema, a minor transnational imaginary, an enduring auteur-genre-landscape tradition, a televisual industry and a multiplatform ecology. Offering fresh critical perspectives and extending previous scholarship, case studies range from The Lego Movie, Mad Max, and Australian stars in Hollywood, to transnational co-productions, YouTube channels, transmedia and nature-cam documentaries. New research on trends – such as the convergence of television and film, digital transformations of screen production and the shifting roles of women on and off-screen – highlight how established precedents have been influenced by new realities beyond both cinema and the national. Written in an accessible style that does not require knowledge of cinema studies or Australian studies Presents original research on Australian actors, such as Cate Blanchett and Chris Hemsworth, their training, branding, and path from Australia to Hollywood Explores the films and filmmakers of the Blak Wave and their challenge to Australian settler-colonial history and white identity Expands the critical definition of cinema to include YouTube channels, transmedia documentaries, multiplatform changescapes and cinematic remix Introduces readers to founding texts in Australian screen studies A Companion to Australian Cinema is an ideal introductory text for teachers and students in areas including film and media studies, cultural and gender studies, and Australian history and politics, as well as a valuable resource for educators and other professionals in the humanities and creative arts.

The book reads the Gothic characteristics of Australian cinema within their national, cultural context. The book relates the key motifs and concerns of Gothic literature to the styles, narratives and significance of Australian films. The book places examples of Australian Gothic film within the Australian filmmaking and film criticism, and relates these to the wider trends of international horror film.

Highlights the industries, markets, identities, and histories that distinguish cinema beyond the traditional hubs of mainstream Western cinema. From Iceland to Iran, from Singapore to Scotland, a growing intellectual and cultural wave of production is taking cinema beyond the borders of its place of origin--exploring faraway places, interacting with barely known peoples, and making new localities imaginable. In these films, previously entrenched spatial divisions no longer function as firmly fixed grid coordinates, the hierarchical position of place as "center" is subverted, and new forms of representation become possible. In Cinema at the Periphery, editors Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones, and Belén Vidal assemble criticism that explores issues of the periphery, including questions of transnationality, place, space, passage, and migration. Cinema at the Periphery examines the periphery in terms of locations, practices, methods, and themes. It includes geographic case studies of small national cinemas located at the global margins, like New Zealand and Scotland, but also of filmmaking that comes from peripheral cultures, like Palestinian "stateless" cinema, Australian Aboriginal films, and cinema from Quebec. Therefore, the volume is divided into two key areas: industries and markets on the one hand, and identities and histories on the other. Yet as a whole, the contributors illustrate that the concept of "periphery" is not fixed but is always changing according to patterns of industry, ideology, and taste. Cinema at the Periphery highlights the inextricable interrelationship that exists between production modes and circulation channels and the emerging narratives of histories and identities they enable. In the present era of globalization, this timely examination of the periphery will interest teachers and students of film and media studies.