AUSTRALIAN CINEMA

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AUSTRALIAN CINEMA
How to think Australian cinema
1. Australian cinema as a national cinema
2. Australian cinema as international cinema
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References Collins Davis (2004) Australian
Cinema after Mabo Dermody Jacka (1988) The
Screening of Australia Vol 2 Jacka (1997) Film
in Cunningham Turner, The Media in
Australia ORegan (1996) Australian National
Cinema ORegan (2001) in your Reader Turner
(1997) in your Reader Verhoeven (2002) Film and
Video in Cunningham Turner, The Media
Communications in Australia
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Australian cinema as a national cinema

• Recurrent themes, styles, character types,
  settings, narrative patterns

2. A particular industry context production,
policy, distribution exhibition, audience etc.
3. Cinema understood in relation to the national
culture, national identity by audiences,
critics, film-makers, policy-makers etc.
4. A national cinema in relation to Hollywood
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Australian cinema as international cinema
1. Not a national cinema developing independently
of Hollywood, but a cinema which is part of
international cinema.
2. Internationalisation of film production and
marketing -- co-production, runaway productions
3. Australian actors, directors, cameramen,
designers etc in Hollywood
4. Australian films drawing on mainstream or
trans-national genres creative interaction
between Australian and international/Hollywood
styles
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ORegan (1996) Australian films in relation to
Hollywood playing up or playing down
Australianness ORegan (2001) local/national
multicultural film critical nationalism (Head
On) versus a universal/trans-national film
(Dark City)
Dermody Jacka (1988) two discourses
cultural nationalism (socially concerned,
distinctively Australian, culturally worthy)
versus commercialism (commercially-oriented
entertainment)
Collins Davis (2004) cultural-interventionist
versus commercial-industrial
PLUS inward-looking Australian films versus
outward-oriented international films
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A new Australian cinema? (1990s-2005)
Turner lack of self-consciousness about
national origins their range of styles and
subjects their disrespectful indigenisation of
mainstream commercial genres The
contradictions between mainstream style and
cultural nationalism reprocessed into a
convincing, unselfconscious hybridity of
structure and content (Priscilla? Love and Other
Catastrophes? Two Hands?)
Jacka (1997) Babe an Aust film (scripted,
produced, directed in Australia) but also
international cooperation the possible future
of the film industry international as well as
national, imbricated with narrative style and
theme that is different from a Hwood blockbuster
but sits comfortably alongside it
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• Verhoeven (2002)
• films and filmmakers happily embedded in both
  the local and the global
• addressing niche audiences internationally
• deploying narrative styles and themes which are
  different from big-budget Hollywood films but sit
  comfortably beside them
• (Mad Max? Two Hands?

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Australian feature film production by decade
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Australian cinema revival

• Phases
• ocker films (early-mid 1970s) contemporary,
  masculine, populist and cheerfully vulgar
• historical period films (late-1970s-1980s)
  Picnic at Hanging Rock, My Brilliant Career
• blockbuster films commercially oriented
  (1980s). Big budget, Hwood genre influence
  Snowy River, Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee
• Multicultural/urban comedies and the glitter
  cycle (1990s) The Heartbreak Kid, Priscilla,
  Muriels Wedding, Strictly Ballroom
• 2000s? post-Mabo films urban comedies

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Film and identity Film and history Film and
landscape