AustLit

Originally funded by a research infrastructure grant from The University of Queensland, the project was established by Professors Tom O'Regan, Frances Bonner, Associate Professor Jason Jacobs, and Kerry Kilner. ScreenLit represents a comprehensive scholarly approach to concentrating the detail about screenwriters, screenplays, published and unpublished manuscripts, original works, and adaptations of literary works in one resource. Biographical information on the writers, editors, directors, producers, and production companies is also provided, where known.

Click here to explore ScreenLit.

(Image source: Eadweard Muybridge's studies of a cat trotting then galloping, the foundation for much moving-picture technology. Via Wikimedia Commons.)

Under construction in 2017 and built collaboratively by The University of Queensland and the University of New England, with support from the Ian Potter Foundation, the AustLit Australian Drama Archive aims to digitise a collection of Australian plays from the twentieth century and bring them to life again through publication, production, and new research.

Plays drawn from the Hanger Collection at UQ and the Campbell Howard Collection are UNE will be progressively digitised and made available through AustLit.

Click here to begin to explore the drama archive.

(Image credit: section of Alfred Gilbert's 'Comedy and Tragedy', 1891. Reproduced via Wikimedia Commons.)

Supported by Australian Research Council Discovery DP130101455, 'Media Transformation in its Australian and International Contexts: Analysis and Theory-building', and built under the guidance of chief investigator Professor Tom O'Regan, this exhibition begins to map the extent to which Australian film and television relies on material adapted from other sources.

From adaptations in the era of silent film, to BBC radio dramas, to works that have been adapted a score of times, this exhibition explores our fascination with transferring works from the page to the screen.

Click here to explore the exhibition.

(Title credit: screen capture of a TV trailer for the Dutch adaptation of Wentworth, itself an adaptation of long-running series Prisoner.)

As Professor Anne Pender notes in her introduction to this collection,

The Australian theatre, television and film industries are dynamic and creative in ways that could never have been imagined half a century ago. Since the 1950s these industries have expanded and demonstrated extraordinary vitality. Our vibrant Australian performing arts industry would not exist in its current form without the creative contribution of actors. Actors are the public face of the performing arts, carrying the immediate responsibility for the success of each show. Yet they are sometimes left out of theatre history.

These fifteen biographical essays by Anne Pender trace the careers of significant Australian actors of the stage, television, and film.

Click here to explore the collection.

(Image credit: Tony Sheldon in I Hate Hamlet at the Marian Street Theatre in 1992, via Players.)

Australian Popular Theatre was established in 2006 with a focus on variety theatre of the 19th and early 20th century. It provides information on a large number of Australian-based stage artists and writers. It also covers the scripts, designers, entrepreneurs, and others in this rich area of popular culture history.

Click here to explore the collection.

(Image credit: Oscar Asche and Lily Brayton, via Wikimedia Commons.)

The Media Archives Project Database, created by the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University, is a register of archives pertaining to the Australian media. It was transferred to the AustLit database in late 2016.

Including newspapers, magazines, radio, television, film and advertising, the MAP database focuses on private and lesser-known archives, held by companies, peak bodies, community groups and individuals. Each archive record contains descriptive information of the archive, plus links to related online material.

Click here to explore the MAP database.

(Image source: Archive of marine geological samples, via Wikimedia Commons.)

A Companion to the Australian Media, edited by Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley, from Maquarie University, was published by Australian Scholarly Publishing in October 2014.  It was published in digital format by AustLit in late 2016.

Click here to explore the Companion.

The Writer in Australian Television History collection is a research outcome of Dr Catriona Mills's 2012 AFI Research Collection (AFIRC) Research Fellowship. Representing a subset of the archives held in the AFI Research Collection at RMIT, The Writer in Australian Television History is a collection of enhanced AustLit records for 318 episodes of Crawfords’ radio dramas and television series, spanning the period from 1953 to 1977.

The 318 scripts examined for this project include episodes from the following eight programs: The Crime Club (1953-1954), Homicide (1964-1977), Hunter (1967-1969), Division 4 (1969-1975), Matlock Police (1970-1975), Ryan (1973-1974), Solo One (1976), and Bluey (1976-1977).

Click here for more detail on the project.

Click here to go directly to the records.

(Image credit: '"Division 4" Packs in the Action', Australian Women's Weekly, 19 May 1971, p.13.)

Between 1906 and 1930, Australia produced over 200 silent films–an enormous output for a nascent industry in a relatively small population. In creating AustLit records for these films, researchers noted the wealth of marketing material in contemporary newspapers, from elaborate advertisements to publicity stills and actors' headshots.

This exhibition gathers together the kind of marketing material that is often ephemeral and forgotten, showcasing the marketing of Australian films in the early days of the industry.

Click here to explore the exhibition.

(Image credit: a colourised image of actress Renée Adorée, then acting in Goldwyn Pictures, taken c.1922. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.)