Reclaiming Uncanny Spaces: Australian Landscapes from the New Wave to the New Indigenous Cinema

Abstract

This video essay contrasts the representation of the Australian landscape in the early films of Peter Weir with those of three contemporary Indigenous filmmakers. It uses Douglas Keesey’s psychoanalytic reading of Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Last Wave (1977) to frame the theme of dispossession in Australian New Wave cinema before considering the response of contemporary Indigenous filmmakers to the same theme.