AustLit

'Justin Kurzel’s latest film, True History of the Kelly Gang, marks the tenth screen version of the 1878-1880 Ned Kelly outbreak. It began in 1906 with Charles Tait’s The Story of the Kelly Gang.' (Introduction)

'This edited collection assesses the complex historical and contemporary relationships between US and Australian cinema by tapping directly into discussions of national cinema, transnationalism and global Hollywood. While most equivalent studies aim to define national cinema as independent from or in competition with Hollywood, this collection explores a more porous set of relationships through the varied production, distribution and exhibition associations between Australia and the US.  To explore this idea, the book investigates the influence that Australia has had on US cinema through the exportation of its stars, directors and other production personnel to Hollywood, while also charting the sustained influence of US cinema on Australia over the last hundred years. It takes two key points in time—the 1920s and 1930s and the last twenty years—to explore how particular patterns of localism, nationalism, colonialism, transnationalism and globalisation have shaped its course over the last century. The contributors re-examine the concept and definition of Australian cinema in regard to a range of local, international and global practices and trends that blur neat categorisations of national cinema. Although this concentration on US production, or influence, is particularly acute in relation to developments such as the opening of international film studios in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and the Gold Coast over the last thirty years, the book also examines a range of Hollywood financed and/or conceived films shot in Australia since the 1920s.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

This article discusses the problems that Australian films face in the big distribution model, and ways that producers have rethought how their films are funded and distributed. To do this it uses the case study of Robert Connolly's Cinema Plus exhibition company. Although there is a historical precedence set for Connolly's self distribution venture, this shift to rethink how Australian films are being distributed and exhibited is certainly representative of a changing reassessment of the porous relationship between production and exhibition, which for some time Screen Australia demarcated in by two separate pools. What Cinema Plus represents is a recognition that conventional big distribution is not always the most effective way to reach the widest possible audience.

'In this article, I want to historicise the study of Australian film adaptation by concentrating on the Copyright Act 1905, which during the nascent industrialisation of patent and copyright law did not recognise celluloid pictures as matter that could be copyrighted. Consequently, with the Act formed to provide authors greater powers to stop the proliferation of degraded versions of their work, film-makers saw adaptation as a strategy to legally protect their moving pictures from copyright infringements. By concentrating on Australia’s early industry of feature film production, it becomes apparent that through adaptation, and through the ability to copyright film as adaptation, there was a strong incentive in this formative period of Australian film production to adapt popular history tales drawn from the literature. And it was through this 1905 Act that the tradition of Australian adaptation and tradition of adapting historically set works began.

'While such an approach is necessary for this study, which concentrates on ‘lost’ feature films, the idea is to consider all forms and types of past and present adaptation as a way to encourage and advance its study. Here, I hope to gain some sort of understanding of how these literary works were being adapted, and socially consumed by its film-going audiences. This approach does not rely solely on a film’s source of adaptation or any one particular film. Instead, it places it within legal discourses of cinema activities including distribution, exhibition and marketing. By concentrating on the Australian cinema’s dedicated tradition of adaptation, during the silent period of film production, in this article, I will discuss how filmgoers at, and outside of, the cinema were encouraged to engage with feature films as adaptation – and what this culturally meant. In doing this, I hope to establish how Australian film adaptation began as a means to copyright a film from piracy and plagiarism ‘rip offs’.'

Source: Abstract.

'One of Australia’s most notorious outlaws, Ned Kelly lived on the land from the time of his first arrest at age 14, until police captured him and his Kelly gang a decade later in 1880. Immortalized in a series of onscreen productions, he has since become one of the most resilient screen presences in the history of Australian cinema.

'Covering the nine feature films, three miniseries, and two TV movies that have been made about this controversial character, Stephen Gaunson illuminates a central irony: from novels to comics to the branding of the site where he was captured, most cultural representations of Kelly are decidedly lowbrow. But only the films have been condemned for not offering a more serious interpretation of this figure and his historical context. Asking what value we can place on such ‘bad’ historical cinema, Gaunson offers new insights about the textual characteristics of cinematic material and the conditions of film distribution, circulation, and reception.' (Publication summary)