Australian Film Genre Studies

Abstract

Since the new millennium, genre films have been gaining increasing acceptance in the Australian feature film industry. Between the mid-2000s and 2020, there has been a strong surge in the production of popular genre movies and a significant diversification in the types of genre movies made. Screen scholar Mark David Ryan has termed the recent growth in Australian genre films the ‘contemporary genre turn’. However, due to complex industrial, economic, and cultural factors, genre films made principally as popular cinema or commercial entertainment have occupied a tenuous position in industry practices, film culture, policy frameworks, and public funding initiatives since the mid-1970s. Consequently, the study of film genre has rarely been a central focus or a major critical approach in Australian film studies. Moreover, the contemporary resurgence of Australian genre filmmaking has received little to no scholarly attention. This introductory chapter begins by contextualising the collection within existing theories and conceptualisations of film genre. It then examines how film genre has functioned as a critical category in Australian film studies and offers a broad history of genre filmmaking in Australian cinema. Finally, it establishes how a small number of previous scholarly studies have developed and applied genre film taxonomies as a theoretical approach in Australian film studies.