AustLit

'Brazen Hussies is an ambitious documentary. With first-time writer/director Catherine Dwyer at the helm, it attempts to trace the women’s movement from 1965 to 1975. The documentary begins by introducing the viewer to the events that sparked the second-wave women’s movement in Australia. It then follows major events and key conflicts before ending the decade with the highs, and lows, of International Women’s Year in 1975. It adopts a traditional documentary format that moves through the decade chrono-thematically and weaves footage and images with talking head style interviews. Brazen Hussies is fast-paced and utilises energetic DIY-style graphics as well as whip-smart editing to tell an engaging story. For example, as Elizabeth Reid – women’s advisor to former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam – described the clothes that she had worn to a meeting with Whitlam at The Lodge – a Laura Ashley dress over underpants with the women’s liberation symbol on the front – a DIY-style graphic depicted a woman lifting up her dress to reveal bright red underpants with the design that Reid had described. While wearing underwear with a feminist logo may not seem subversive to a contemporary audience, the use of DIY-style graphics was a punchy and playful way to convey how brazen Reid would have felt.' (Introduction)

'This book has a place in that honourable environmental history tradition of closely examining a region. As usual within that tradition, a focus on fully understanding a particular place has created a text in which dramatic moments are provided by events such as mice plagues and new tillage regimes. The strength of the book’s writing means these events are genuinely riveting. And that writing is supported by careful and thorough research: this book marks the culmination of a project funded by the Australian Research Council that involved significant Australian historians, and researchers with strong local ties and a clear commitment to country.' (Introduction)

'Both Judith Brett’s The Enigmatic Mr Deakin and Julia Suares’ J.B. Chifley: An ardent internationalist have received much attention since their publication in 2017 and 2019. This review is coming late to the parties welcoming the revitalisation of our understanding of two of Australia’s most significant prime ministers. The coupling of these books here might seem unlikely. Alfred Deakin (1856–1919) and Ben Chifley (1885–1951) led during transformative periods. Brett judges Deakin ‘Australia’s most constructive prime minister before … World War Two’ (330); Suares seeks greater recognition of Chifley’s influence in shaping the reconstruction agenda following that war, particularly in pursuing a bold ‘emergent future’ of international cooperation (18). In background and personality, however, the two can hardly have been more different. What can these two studies, and these two men, show when viewed side-by-side? At a time when the personal account dominates discussion of political leadership, it is in itself refreshing to reflect on the different contexts that shaped these figures, not as individual projects but as lives interdependent with their times.' (Introduction)

'One of the first of the ‘Documentary Film Cultures’ series coming out from Peter Lang, Jennifer Debenham’s new study of documentary about Aboriginal people argues for the benefits of the media ecology approach, which the series as a whole explores. Documentary makers have visited Aboriginal communities for over a century, using technologies that have changed radically during that time; the presumptions and values of successive expeditions altered, as did the nature of the encounters. The films they took away with them and shaped into narratives were some of the most influential lenses through which urban Australians perceived Indigenous Australians. As racial politics shifted, anthropological curiosity gave way to activism on behalf of, then in collaboration with, marginalised communities. By the beginning of the twenty-first century the camera – safer, lighter, more adaptable and cheaper to use – was more often in Indigenous hands and so was the story. Distribution, too, shifted and changed: from cinemas, television, schools and universities, to the current dominance of online streaming and management through government repositories. The media ecology approach seeks to chart how these elements of making, distributing and watching film interact with each other, and with the subjects of the films and their audiences.' (Introduction)