Australian Director Research Articles

Popular Modernism, Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Australian New Wave: The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) and Gallipoli (1981)

ABSTRACT Dominant narratives of the Australian New Wave tend to frame the efflorescence of national filmmaking in the 1970s through the lens of Gough Whitlam’s brand of cultural nationalism. The narrative usually runs as follows: state-funded films tended to favour a conservative, genteel and respectable aesthetic that came to be known as the “Australian Film Commission genre”. This article uses Mark Fisher’s concept of “popular modernism” to challenge this dominant account of the Australian New Wave first put forth by Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka, outlining the ways in which social democracy and state funding provided the conditions that allowed filmmakers to produce radical films that were anti-nationalist in character. As we will argue, when national film production deviated from this configuration and became circumscribed by neoliberal restructuring and economic rationalism in the 1980s, the New Wave took on an increasingly nationalist impulse. The article will trace this trajectory through a narrative analysis of two films from lauded Australian director Peter Weir: The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) and Gallipoli (1981).

Aboriginalizing Mother Courage: Brecht in Australia

ABSTRACT This article investigates the crucial role of Brechtian aesthetics in representing the voice of Aboriginal Australians. It examines the theatre of Wesley Enoch, an Aboriginal Australian director and playwright, and argues that Enoch’s 2013 adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, performed at the Queensland Theatre Company, Brisbane, formed an instance of resistance against epistemic hegemony. The first part of the article examines the device of the heckler, central to the writings of Australian Aboriginals, by focusing on Kevin Gilbert’s The Cherry Pickers (1988) and shows how the device functions to articulate the peripheral voices of the Aboriginal Australians. The second part demonstrates how Enoch employed the heckler trope through his dramaturgy to protest against the Australian nation state. Broadly, it illustrates how Enoch’s production used Aboriginal aesthetics to voice Aborigines’ challenge to established norms, an act that remained independent of Brechtian theatre’s previous uses in the Australian context.

:World Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern Textual Culture

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Entrepreneurial navigation of the Australian screen industries: The case of Dr D Studios

This article analyses the case of the short-lived Australian visual effects and animation enterprise Dr D Studios, which was co-founded by Australian film director, George Miller. Although Miller is an important figure in the history of the contemporary Australian screen industries, he has only rarely been the focus of significant scholarly analysis. Using the emerging scholarly concept of creative entrepreneurship, I analyse Dr D Studios as an instrument for Miller's navigation of the Australian screen industries, and as a strategy for adapting his filmmaking career to emerging industrial conditions and thereby manage and enhance his artistic practice, generate social value for the Australian creative sector, and secure economic value for his filmmaking operation. My analysis develops a new understanding of the career and practice of this significant Australian media figure and demonstrates the effectiveness of the creative entrepreneurship rubric for the future study of Australian screen producers.

Settler Colonial Studies and/as the Transnational Western

Abstract The article explores contemporary debates regarding the representation of Indigenous resistance in the field of settler colonial studies by putting the work of Australian theorist Patrick Wolfe into conversation with the political allegories articulated in two contemporary Western films. Its first section, tracing what Wolfe called his “pharmacological indebtedness” to Gayatri Spivak, considers the methodological problems for settler colonial studies that have emerged from Wolfe’s critique of the settler intellectual’s representation of Indigenous resistance. The second section suggests an alternative direction for transnational settler colonial studies by undertaking a comparative reading of two films—Hell or High Water (2016) written by US settler filmmaker Taylor Sheridan, and Goldstone (2016) written and directed by Indigenous Australian (Gamilaroi) director Ivan Sen. Both films collapse the detective genre with settler colonialism’s most recognizable representational genre: the Western. In so doing, they articulate narratives about the ongoing crimes of settler colonialism that offer novel perspectives on the question of what is knowable—and by whom—under settler colonialism’s structure of violence.

W stronę teorii hybrydowych – między studiami o niesprawności i posthumanizmem

The author analyses the theoretical and empirical convergence between posthumanist studies and disability studies. She begins with an explanation of the philosophy and tasks that researchers on posthuman disability set themselves. She discusses this issue using the example of the movie Orchids. My Intersex Adventure by the Australian director Phoebe Hart and her autobiographical texts. In the last part of the article, the author focuses on the concept of hybrid theories based on intersectionality.

Under the Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment and the Stubborn Myth of The Great Gatsby

Under the Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment and the Stubborn Myth of <i>The Great Gatsby</i>

Ivan Sen’s Transnational Post-Westerns: Mystery Road (2012) and Goldstone (2016)

ABSTRACT This paper uses Neil Campbell’s definition of post-Westerns as films ‘coming after and going beyond the traditional Western whilst engaging with and commenting on its deeply haunting assumptions and values’ (Post-Westerns, 2013) in order to expand it to a transnational, post-colonial context and focus on two films made by Australian director Ivan Sen (Mystery Road [2013] and Goldstone [2016]) that can be considered Australian post-Westerns. These two films make references not only to American Westerns, but also to the less known genre of Australian Westerns or ‘bushranger films’, and they use, on the one hand, an aboriginal protagonist as reminder of the ‘black tracker’ typical of Australian Westerns, and on the other, the Australian outback to question the country’s identity and foundational myths. By establishing a complex dialogue both with American Westerns and their Australian counterpart, Ivan Sen articulates a discourse which refutes the country’s foundational myth as a terra nullius, and proposes a new sense of national identity that is inclusive of the Indigenous experience.

Visible Things Unseen

Research Article| March 01 2020 Visible Things Unseen: Co-creation and Its Philosophical Turn Reece Auguiste Reece Auguiste Reece Auguiste is a practitioner and scholar focusing on national cinemas, transnational screen cultures, and documentary practice. He is a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective and directed Twilight City (1989), Mysteries of July (1991), Duty of the Hour (2016), and Stillness Spirit (2017). He is an associate professor of critical media practices at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2020) 47 (1): 36–41. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2020.471007 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Reece Auguiste; Visible Things Unseen: Co-creation and Its Philosophical Turn. Afterimage 1 March 2020; 47 (1): 36–41. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2020.471007 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search In response to being called an “auteur,” the Australian director of such films as The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (1978) and Roxanne (1987), Fred Schepisi, scoffed: “Auteur theory just denigrates everyone else's job.”1 Unfortunately, the acts of denigration alluded to are in the name of an idea that has found expression in many critical texts and received the blessings of scholars and critics across a large spectrum of constituencies. As a result, we have witnessed theoretical battles and multiple contentious debates pursued over the historical meanings and cultural implications of “auteur theory” or single authorship in film and media arts production. The accumulative result of these historical debates is a series of competing interpretations about the legitimacy of an idea that has glacially evolved into what is now an entrenched categorical imperative in theories of the moving image. The rhetorical underpinnings of the advocates of single authorship are, more... You do not currently have access to this content.

Taming the Hobyahs: Adapting and re-visioning a British tale in Australian literature and film.

Since its first collection and publication in 1891, the gothic fairy tale ‘The Hobyahs’ has inspired various incarnations in Australian literature and film. This paper explores the trajectory of ‘The Hobyahs’ from its proposed Scottish ori-genesis and adaptation within the context of Victorian (Australian) primary school education, to its revisioning in Australian director Ann Turner’s debut film Celia (1988). In so doing, the paper raises questions about what was misplaced, or lost, as this British tale evolved within Australia’s changing historical contexts and argues that re-visions of the tale made possible through the process of filmic re-contextualisation engaged more authentically with its original gendered undercurrents. Examining the evolution of ‘The Hobyahs’ from print to film also expands upon previous scholarship that has acknowledged the tale’s distinct Australianness and suggests a broader contention regarding the cyclical nature of Australia’s relationship to British fairy-tale traditions: that re-visions have the potential to destabilise earlier twentieth-century Australian adaptations and, in the process, critique the notion of Australian fairy-tale formation itself.

Nuevas formas de llevar una ópera al teatro. Un caso de estudio. La flauta mágica de la compañía 1927 y de Kosky: animación 2d, nuevas tecnologías digitales y estilo vintage

La ópera, un género que a menudo se asocia al pasado, está más viva que nunca. Gracias a la aportación de directores y experimentadores provenientes del teatro, la ópera se ha convertido en uno de los campos por excelencia para la experimentación contemporánea, sobre todo en relación con el uso de nuevas tecnologías. Una verdadera paradoja. Un ejemplo es la puesta en escena de La flauta mágica de Mozart de la Komische Oper de Berlín, concebida y realizada por la compañía británica 1927 y por el director australiano Barrie Kosky en 2012. Es una representación atípica y extraña que utiliza las nuevas tecnologías del “video project mapping” y, al mismo tiempo, las técnicas de animación 2D —dibujos hechos a mano— con la intención de fusionar estéticas del pasado, sobre todo la del cine mudo y la de los orígenes de la animación, con la contemporaneidad. La intención de este trabajo es analizar la puesta en escena de esta obra en relación con los problemas actuales de la representación de óperas de repertorio.

“By Looking Liking”: Baz Luhrmann’S William Shakespeare’S Romeo+Juliet

Abstract Twenty years since its release onto the big screen, Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet continues to attract viewers, divide critics and remain unchallenged, in a league of its own, when it comes to film adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays. This article begins with taking stock of reception directions which still dispute the field of film adaptation. Cued by Worthen’s “Performance Paradigm”, my argument positions Luhrmann’s film (his second at the time and the one to propel the Australian director into Hollywood fame) firmly in the cinematic and sees the film narrative not as opposed to the textual and/or spoken one, but as a complex citational practice developed at the level of oral, visual and written discourse.

Alfred Rolfe: forgotten pioneer Australian film director

ABSTRACTAlfred Rolfe was arguably the most prolific silent era Australian director. He was responsible for more than 25 feature films, encompassing the bushranger genres, early Australian war cinema and various melodramas. Many of his films were both critical and commercial successes. The only surviving footage is scenes from two of his 1915 war films. This important director has been overshadowed by his contemporaries, particularly Raymond Longford. This paper argues that Rolfe’s contribution to early Australian cinema was significant, not just in volume, but also in artistic terms, in subject matter, and in popular appeal. The centenary of Anzac is also the centenary of Australia’s first Gallipoli movie, Rolfe’s The Hero of the Dardanelles (1915), which was one of the most successful films at the box office for its time.

Unspoken Desires: Lore as case study on shadow narrative

Abstract This article explores the concept of a shadow narrative lying under the surface of the main film narrative through a case study of the 2012 film Lore. The film is based on the second story in Rachel Seiffert’s book The Dark Room. It was adapted for the screen by British screenwriter Robin Mukherjee and Australian director and screenwriter Cate Shortland. I will search for the structure of this narrative through an analysis of key emotional scenes, moments or spectral traces when the unspoken desires of the protagonist, Lore, surface and take form, when subtext becomes text and nothing is ever the same again. Using film analyst Paul Gulino’s argument that most narrative films consist of eight major sequences, each between eight and fifteen minutes, I will break the film into eight sequences and then identify one key emotional scene in each sequence. I will then analyse the eight key scenes and discuss the development of Lore’s shadow or unspoken narrative of desire. Some of these key scenes re-imagine or extend narrative moments from the book, but most are new, created by the screenwriters in order to make visible the invisible transformation of character and to heighten themes introduced in the first story in the book and brought to a resolution in the third.

Australia's lost children at play: the films of Baz Luhrmann

This article examines the body of locally and internationally produced cinema by Australian director Baz Luhrmann. A filmmaker who in the past has struggled to achieve critical credibility in the mainstream press, Luhrmann is consistently supported by multinationals like 20th Century Fox for his mass domestic and global appeal. Of interest in this analysis is the way in which each film plays with the dominant Australian cultural complex of the ‘lost child’. Rather than repeating the themes of helplessness and abandonment central to much Australian storytelling, Luhrmann invites us to play with the concept of being ‘lost’ – exploring it with childlike wonder and awe. His work has the promise of opening up a (Winnicottian)potential spaceof exploration, where we are invited to embrace being lost as way of entering into self and cultural discovery. It is likely that thisreturnto play and creativity, in the extreme style that has become synonymous with Luhrmann, is the source of his audience loyalty.

Motyw łabędzia w filmach „Piknik pod wiszącą skałą” Petera Weira i „Czarny łabędź” Darrena Aronfsky’ego

In the article there are described methods and functions of swan motif used in films Picnic at Hanging Rock by Peter Weir and Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky. In the work of Australian director very important on that matter are the following: the main character (Miranda), pictorial intertexts, plot structure and some of the formal elements. In Black Swan various connections between the film and Peter Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake are crucial. In the article there is also presented initiation process of both film characters, which is important for the swan motif. It is an area of comparison of these relatively different works as well. Last part of the article discusses elements of kitsch in the mentioned motif (because of considerable amount of it in low standard art) and tries to prove that methods of exploiting the swan motif by both Peter Weir and Darren Aronofsky are far from kitsch.

From D.H. Lawrence to the Language of Cinema: Chaste Sacrifices in The Woman Who Rode Away and Picnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock, a 1975 film by the Australian film director Peter Weir, opens with an eerie shot of a large, dark rock, covered in a shroud of mist, accompanied by unsettling sounds of an Aboriginal didgeridoo, that seem to emanate from the earth itself. This image can arguably be identified as the one that launched what came to be known as the New Wave of Australian film in the mid 1970s. The iconic image of Hanging Rock is immediately followed by a shot of a quaint colonial school l...

In Search of Peter Weir

As part of the preparation for a book on Australian director Peter Weir, the author visited Weir's home in Sydney for interviews about his life, career, and work.

Selected Film Essays and Interviews by Bruce Kawin

164 Mississippi Quarterly Selected Film Essays and Interviews. Bruce Kawin. London: Anthem Press, 2013. 215 pp. $40 paper. BRUCE KAWIN, PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND FILM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF Colorado-Boulder, has been writing elegantly and rigorously (one of his mantras is “getting it right”) about film for around forty years and across an impressive number of books, chapters, articles, and interviews. The most significant of these have now been collected in one volume for the first time, and together represent the breadth and depth of Kawin’s interests and scholarship: American, British, and European film and literature; film, television, and video; and genre and art-house film. Faulkner scholars will already be familiar with Kawin via his trailblazing scholarship on Faulkner’s screenplays and cinematic fiction —for Kawin, Faulkner is the most cinematic of authors. Not even a handful of scholars had taken seriously Faulkner’s relationship to film before Kawin’s initial foray into the field in 1977 with “A Faulkner Filmography.” He subsequently produced further essays, a book (Faulkner and Film, 1977) and a scholarly edition (Faulkner’s MGM Screenplays,1982)onthiscinematicFaulkner,concludingwiththe2002 publication of excerpts from his 1976 interview with Howard Hawks not long before the director’s death. It was Hawks, of course, who first enticed Faulkner out to Hollywood where they collaborated on numerous projects over the course of two decades. This interview is published here in its entirety for the first time along with Kawin’s 1978 interview with silent-screen star Lillian Gish, who discusses, among other things, her collaboration with D. W. Griffith on Intolerance(1916) and Broken Blossoms (1919). What Hawks has to say here about Faulkner’s and his own use of “opposites” (114-15) in their respective creative practices is particularly intriguing when read alongside Kawin’s arguably most important contribution to Faulkner studies, his 1979 essay “The Montage Element in Faulkner’s Fiction,” also collected here. Kawin’s insight is that Faulkner, in his “greatest novels and stories,” deployed the specifically cinematictropeofmontage,evidenced in his use of “oxymoron,dynamic unresolution, parallel plotting, rapid shifts in time and space, and multiple narration” (136). To put it simply, Faulkner “was doing something that the cinema also did” (136). As incisively, Kawin observes that “Faulkner recognized a difference between the terms ‘Hollywood’ and ‘film,’ although many of his biographers, critics and colleagues seem 165 Book Reviews to have missed that particular boat” (141). In one fell swoop and over thirty years ago, Kawin writes back to those scholars who even today disavow or dismiss the cinematic Faulkner, be it the screenwriter, the avid movie-goer, or the cinematic novelist. Indeed, it has only been in this century that the implications of Kawin’s cutting-edge readings of Faulkner have been fully appreciated and pursued. SelectedFilmEssays and Interviews.also includes a tribute to another Southerner, Horton Foote, whom Kawin characterizes as “a legend” of television’s golden age. Unlike Faulkner’s teleplays and screenplays, Foote’s have seemed less controversial subjects for discussion, and include his original screenplay Tender Mercies (1983) for Australian director Bruce Beresford; his redaction of To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962); and teleplays such as redactions of Faulkner’s “Tomorrow” (Tomorrow, 1960; film, 1972), the “Old Man” sections of The Wild Palms (Old Man, 1997), and “Barn Burning” (Barn Burning, 1980), and also of Flannery O’Connor’s “The Displaced Person” (The Displaced Person, 1977). I was tantalized by Kawin’s description of Baby the Rain Must Fall (Mulligan, 1965), for which Foote wrote the screenplay, as “Foote’s answer to Faulkner’s Light in August.” (152). As Kawin reminds us that Foote “spans the gap between the studios and the shoestring independents” (150), he also places him in direct dialogue with Faulkner and O’Connor in—who would have thought?—the televisual field. And this is what is so valuable about Kawin’s collection, particularly the manner in which it has been curated. The essays on two significant Southern litterateurs, better known for fiction or stage drama, are situated within the field of the visual (cinematic, televisual, video) and the scholarship that obtains there. The bulk of Kawin’s Selected Film Essays and Interviews, as...

Australian Social Security Crimes: Basic Concepts and Understandings for Non-Legal Practitioners

Social security crimes could be committed intentionally or unintentionally by the claimant. Those who were facing charges by the plaintiff of Commonwealth Australian government Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) could experienced certain degree of anxiousness if without sufficient legal knowledge to understand the basic human rights available to defend oneself from being accused in law court. Limitation of legal assistance from the community legal centers would encourage do-it-yourself independent legal studies habit, where the defendant may need to prove the absence of dishonesty in the crime commitment. The article provides basic information on the social security crimes for those non-legal practitioners in the settlement of disputes of social security with the government of Commonwealth Australia.