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Anwen Crawford Anwen Crawford i(13573357 works by)
Gender: Female
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1 3 y separately published work icon No Document Anwen Crawford , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2021 21161828 2021 single work essay

'A groundbreaking new work of non-fiction by one of Australia’s most respected essay writers.

'No Document is an elegy for a friendship cut short prematurely by death. The memory of this friendship becomes a model for how we might relate to others in sympathy, solidarity and rebellion. At once intimate and expansive, Anwen Crawford’s book-length essay explores loss in many forms: disappeared artworks, effaced histories, abandoned futures. From the turmoil of grief and the solace of memory, her perspective embraces histories of protest and revolution, art-making and cinema, border policing, and especially our relationships with animals. No Document shows how love and resistance echo through time.

'Anwen Crawford is best known for her writing as a critic, but here she draws on her background as a zine-maker and visual artist, and her training in poetry, to develop a new way of writing about the past, using a symphonic method of composition and collage. No Document is an urgent, groundbreaking work of non-fiction that reimagines the boundaries that divide us – as people, nations and species – and asks how we can create forms of solidarity that endure.'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 [Review] Judy and Punch Anwen Crawford , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 417 2019; (p. 66)

— Review of Judy & Punch Mirrah Foulkes , 2019 single work film/TV
'The fictional town of Seaside is ‘nowhere near the sea’, state the opening credits of Judy and Punch. Fine, but where or even when this film is set remains a puzzle throughout. The two titular characters, puppeteers Judy (Mia Wasikowska) and Punch (Damon Herriman), speak with an Irish lilt. The rest of the townsfolk – who come bedecked in grimy pirate shirts and motley, corseted gowns – possess an array of Scottish and English accents. The film opens with the medieval spectacle of three accused witches being stoned to death, and yet Seaside also boasts a uniformed police constable. Enough eucalypts are glimpsed in the background to alert any attentive viewer to the fact that, wherever Seaside is meant to be, this film was shot in Australia – in Eltham, Victoria, as it happens. Yet no reference is made to Australia at any point.' (Introduction)
1 A Way Home Anwen Crawford , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: The Monthly , November no. 161 2019; (p. 68-70)
“I’d thought it had just been me and my brothers and sisters who’d been taken,” writes Archie Roach in Tell Me Why (Simon & Schuster), his newly published memoir. The singer-songwriter is recalling one of the first times that he performed his best-known song, “Took the Children Away”, in public. It was 1988, and Roach and his partner, the late musician and artist Ruby Hunter, had travelled with their two sons to La Perouse – “the only place in Sydney where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have continuously lived from before 1788 to this day” – in order to join protests against the bicentennial celebrations. It was January 25, the day before the 200th anniversary of British invasion, and at the protest camp Hunter encouraged Roach to get onstage and play a song, in an effort to diffuse a growing argument among the crowd over the route of the next day’s march. “I didn’t sing to impress or to educate,” Roach writes, of his performance that day. “I sang to honour.” (Introduction)
1 All Veils and Misty Anwen Crawford , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Monthly , July no. 157 2019; (p. 68-70)

— Review of Mystify : Michael Hutchence Richard Lowenstein , 2019 single work film/TV biography

'The article reports that filmmaker Richard Lowenstein states that musician Bono's confession got Lowenstein thinking about the "dilemma" of fame, and particularly about how it might have affected the two men's late singer Michael Hutchence. It cites a report that concluded that Hutchence had committed suicide, but a persistent rumour took hold that he had died as the result of a sex game gone wrong.' (Publication abstract) 

1 [Review Essay] Berlin Syndrome Anwen Crawford , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: ABR : Arts 2017;

'Australian director Cate Shortland has made three feature films about young women who find themselves out of their depths. Her first, Somersault (2004), set in wintry Jindabyne, featured Abbie Cornish in an early and memorable role as a troubled teenage runaway. Lore (2012) was adapted from Rachel Seiffert’s Booker-shortlisted novel The Dark Room; its titular character, the daughter of Nazis, must lead her younger siblings on a difficult journey across Germany during the last days of World War II. Shortland’s new film, Berlin Syndrome, also takes places in Germany, as the title suggests, and is also adapted from a novel. But the setting is contemporary, and the plot concerns Clare (Teresa Palmer), an Australian tourist and photographer, whose chance meeting with a local man has awful consequences.'  (Introduction)

1 Towards Joy Anwen Crawford , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: The Best Australian Essays 2017 2017; (p. 302-309)
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