AustLit

'In Baz Luhrmann's Australia (2008), audiences encounter emotive scenes including depictions of an Indigenous child stolen from a white ‘mother’ in a time of war. Given that the film is framed with reference to the history of the Stolen Generations and the Apology, this paper explores the functions of such a narrative in constructions of the white imaginary. Inverting truths around the destruction of Indigenous families and policies of assimilation, management and control requires in this instance the appropriation of the maternal domain of the Indigenous mother by the white female body; an English woman reclaiming ‘her’ land. Through such a repositioning, anxieties around belonging and guilt may undergo a form of catharsis via the apparent empathetic engagement with a ‘stolen’ maternal love. Drawing on Ghassan Hage's insights into the possessive logic of the ‘white’ nation and Sara Ahmed's analysis of emotional politics, this article analyses the connection between the films Australia and Jedda (1955), critiquing the potential for such a cinematic catharsis to assuage shame, and reify national virtue. I contend that there is a violence inherent in colonising ‘love’ through such fantasies that inhabit the locus and stories of ‘the other’ at the moment of ‘Apology’, neutralising threats to negative conceptions of self as benevolent bodies at ‘home’ in the imaginary landscape of Australia.' (Publication abstract)

'Nurses have traditionally been seen as among the most trusted of workers, with cultural connections with caring and femininity long been associated with their profession. While the portrayal of nurses in overseas screenworks has had some attention, Australian productions have not. This study identifies four categories of screenworks: popular entertainment, training and recruitment films, wartime nursing, and nurses as workers and unionists. Although more recent mainstream media portrayals of nurses increasingly depict strong, assertive professionals, little research has been conducted into the fourth category, a significant number of which are made by nurses. When nurses take on the film-making task, different outcomes are produced. New types of film about nurses and by nurses offer an evolving representation of the profession and are helping to change the identity of nurses.' (Publication abstract)

'2015 will mark 40 years since the release of Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock. The film, based on the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, concerns the inexplicable disappearance of three schoolgirls and a governess from a picnicking party on Valentine's Day in 1900. The film is characterized in criticism and cultural theory alike as a meditation on the stirrings of twentieth-century Australian society, whereby the trappings of Victorian England (figured as the ‘old world’) are gradually giving way to the new, Australian-born settler culture. These binary contrasts, populating the narrative and visual style of the film, have in turn driven a large portion of the criticism and literature produced in response. This paper considers Picnic at Hanging Rock as a love story, taking as its central focus the ‘unconsummated’ relationship between disappeared schoolgirl Miranda and recently arrived young English aristocrat Michael Fitzhubert. This is a relationship figured through courtly love: an admiration from afar. Miranda's subsequent, permanent disappearance from the narrative of the film means that for Michael, the brief moment of encounter forms the basis for every dream and remembrance occurring thereafter. The courtly love current through the film is enhanced by the setting of Valentine's Day, thereby cloaking the film in the rituals of love – albeit often unrequited. Jacques Lacan's and Slavoj Žižek's works on courtly love and beauty are drawn on to site the film in a critical landscape beyond the either/or of a binaric structuralist convention.' (Publication summary)

'Innovation is at all times accompanied by tradition and creative action of all types takes place against a backdrop of continuity and change, as stated by Keith Negus and Michael Pickering in their 2004 book Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value. On page 91, they write: ‘It is only by thinking about their interrelationship that we can understand processes of creativity and cultural change.’ These assertions can be seen most readily in the creative screen industries that exist in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. Whether we are talking about networked, broadcast, cinematic or virtual screen industries, it can be seen that the Hunter Valley, centered on the city of Newcastle, has participated, and continues to participate, in the multiplicity of production practices that typify this industry. From Yahoo Serious's Young Einstein to Jamie Lewis's Mikey's Extreme Romance, from NBN Television's Big Dog to the independent documentary The Face of Birth, from the Shoot Out competition to the Real Film Festival, from the contributions of Enigma to the Feel Inspired promotions of Out of the Square Media, the creative screen industries have been well represented in the Hunter Valley and are supported by the regional film agency Screen Hunter. These screen industries are like all creative industries in that many of the creatives who work in these sectors depend on patronage to do what they do (Dawson and Holmes 2012, 10). That may come in the form of direct payments for their skills or by being subsidized by other related work, for example in the advertising industry or being embedded within institutions that need those screen-based skills. There is an increasingly entrepreneurial bent among these creative screen workers. All of them are engaged in one way or another with the generation and exploitation of intellectual property, which comes with an increasing reliance on digital technologies. This paper intends to map the creative screen industries in the Hunter Valley, outline where they came from, and attempt to place them inside a fast-changing global context.' (Publication abstract)

'52 Tuesdays (2013) is an ambitious and distinctively structured feature film that explores family relationships and one teenager's coming of age in contemporary suburban Australia. The story centers on 16-year-old Billie (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) who is surprised to discover that her beloved mother Jane (later known as James) wishes to transition from female to male. James needs some time out to adjust; however, mother and daughter vow to meet every Tuesday after school and spend the evening together, thus setting the ground rules for the structure around which 52 Tuesdays revolves. The film draws upon documentary elements in that it was in fact filmed over 52 consecutive Tuesdays and was therefore affected by significant change both on and off screen over the course of the year. Funded by the South Australian Film Corporation's now-defunct FilmLab program, 52 Tuesdays went into production based on a short treatment. This working document, which outlined characters and story arcs, changed during the yearlong production period as co-writers Matt Cormack and Sophie Hyde continued to develop the story on a weekly basis. In effect, this meant that the film's conception and development was closely linked with its execution, with the process of screenwriting not only driving production, but also being driven by production. In this article I examine the film's structure, the innovative practices of what I term ‘staggered’ screenwriting and production that bought the project to fruition, and consider the consequences of these working methods on the finished product. The article is informed by interviews with screenwriter Matt Cormack and director Sophie Hyde, as well as a formal textual analysis of the film. I argue that 52 Tuesdays' ‘one day a week’ style of filmmaking, with its open-endedness and incorporation of documentary elements, is one that fosters notions of authenticity for both its creators and audience. Furthermore, this timely, innovative and low-budget project has much intelligence to offer both practitioners and researchers investigating experimental approaches to feature film writing and development.' (Publication abstract)