Australian Film in the Australian Literature Classroom

Abstract

australian cinema is a FascinatinG subJect For a course. iF one were to teach such a university course, one could take any number of paths, historical and thematic being most common. this essay, however, is not about teaching Australian film. Rather, it is about using Australian film in teaching Australian literature in ways that enhance that undertaking. those who teach Australian literature beyond its shores are, perhaps, more inclined to turn to film than those who teach other national literatures because film has been, for many, their initial exposure to Australia. in late 1970s and early 1980s, when Australian government was striving to enhance its international standing in arts, it chose to focus on film. Many were produced to global acclaim, and after watching Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant (1980), Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career (1979), or peter Weir's Gallipoli (1981) many in academic contexts outside Australia were drawn to examine Australian writing. since then, film has not lost its prominence among those who study Australian literature. this essay will explore three directions teachers might pursue in integrating film into Australian literature courses.First, given importance of certain new Wave films, they might be screened not just as examples of cinema but for what they announce to world about nation. second, throughout Australian cinema, many novels (and some plays and poetry) have been transformed to screen, with usual issues facing adaptations. students can explore these issues and/or be exposed to additional longer written works, since routine course in Australian writing can only assign so many. third, not surprisingly, what one might regard as dominant concerns or themes of Australian writing recur in many films, allowing teachers to add that further explore important themes. For example, if teachers wanted to explore theme of mateship, then readings could be supplemented by a viewing of Gallipoli and, if teachers wanted to complicate a theme traditionally presented in male-male terms, John duigan's The Year My Voice Broke (1987), which depicts a cross-gendered relationship, and p. J. Hogan's Muriel's Wedding (1994) , which depicts a female-female one. this essay will discuss these three directions. it will, first, briefly trace history of Australian film.1australian Film: backGroundsurprising to some, Australian cinema has a history as extensive as Hollywood's. Many pioneering films, in fact, were made in Australia in early 1900s. However, two world wars left industry largely moribund by 1965, when government decided to help Australia to achieve prominence in arts through film.A great deal of federal and state money produced a flood of in 1970s and early 1980s.2 Many were shockingly bad examples of Hollywood B films in genres such as horror, sex comedy, or sci-fi, but some were first-rate.3 Although not all of these quality looked to Australia's past, many did, creating what dermody and Jacka termed the AFC Genre, based on assumption that Australian Film Commission as a funding body preferred these celebratory period pieces to that depicted contemporary Australia.in 1980s, Australian government shifted how it funded film from giving grants to offering generous tax incentives. this shift resulted in still more by filmmakers with varying degrees of talent. to profit, these needed not only Australian but global (or at least American) distribution. thus, there was further Hollywoodization of film during rest of 1980s and early 1990s. some of these Americanized films, although scorned by purists, were of quality. peter Faiman's Crocodile Dundee (1986), for example, is very well made, and George Miller's The Man from Snowy River (1982) is beautifully filmed and very entertaining. there were also a number of that so strongly evoke mood (The Year My Voice Broke and Armstrong's High Tide [1987]), outrage (Beresford's The Fringe Dwellers [1986] and steve Jodrell's Shame [1988]), or a quirky energy (Muriel's Wedding and Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom [1992]) that some Hollywood touches are readily overlooked. …