“Westie” Films and Doing Transnational Action

Abstract

In recent years, a new type of guerrilla diasporic filmmaking has emerged in the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne. With no official funding, shot on digital camera, using amateur crew and cast, promoted through the ethnic community, and distributed informally via word of mouth or on the Internet, numerous short films based on the genre of transnational action cinema have been made by diasporic young Asians living in the peripheral Western suburbs of these metropolitan cities. The term westie films characterize this excentric spatial location and mode of production. This essay examines this phenomenon of westie filmmaking in Australia to consider the impact of transnational action cinema on new Asian Australian modes of doing.