Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity * Jane Campion

Abstract

The field of ‘Campion studies’, as it has become known,1 has been reinvigorated by the release of Jane Campion's first feature film in six years, Bright Star (2009), and the timely publication of two new books: Deb Verhoeven's monograph, simply titled Jane Campion, and the edited collection, Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity. Together these books offer a detailed and thorough examination of not only Campion's films but her persona as an auteur, as a woman director and as an ‘antipodean’ filmmaker. As such they constitute an important intervention in current theorizing about the contemporary auteur (or the ‘post-auteur’), as well as a substantial contribution to our understanding of Campion's cinema. Jane Campion is a figure that looms large in writings on feminist film theory and histories of Australian and New Zealand cinema. Despite a self-imposed hiatus from feature film production following the release of In the Cut (2003), Campion's importance as a filmmaker and the legacy of her most famous film, The Piano (1993), continued to be felt – in academic circles at least – through the publication of key works by Kathleen McHugh, Gail Jones and Barbara Klinger,2 and the 2006 international research colloquium co-hosted by the University of Otago and the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, which produced the collection of new essays reviewed here. Edited by the colloquium's organizers, Hilary Radner and Irène Bessière, together with Alistair Fox, Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity revisits and builds upon previous Campion scholarship, such as the seminal study by Dana Polan, earlier anthologies and interviews, and the poetic and deeply personal work of Sue Gillett,3 who contributes a new essay to this collection.