AustLit

'The Australian screen industry is booming.'

'Australian Genre Film interrogates key genres at the core of Australia’s so-called new golden age of genre cinema, establishing the foundation on which more sustained research on film genre in Australian cinema can develop.

'The book examines what characterises Australian cinema and its output in this new golden age, as contributors ask to what extent Australian genre film draws on widely understood (and largely Hollywood-based) conventions, as compared to culturally specific conventions of genre storytelling. As such, this book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of Australian genre film, undertaken through original analyses of 13 significant Australian genres: action, biopics, comedy, crime, horror, musical, road movie, romance, science fiction, teen, thriller, war, and the Western.

'This book will be a cornerstone work for the burgeoning field of Australian film genre studies and a must-read for academics; researchers; undergraduate students; postgraduate students; and general readers interested in film studies, media studies, cultural studies, Australian studies, and sociology.' (Publication summary)

'Public focus on screen business in Australia has been shaped by the information needs of the regulatory and content investment agencies that monitor and support screen content made under the creative control of Australians. This has meant that available data has concentrated on the types of content that have been deemed to require regulatory support – feature films, documentaries and television drama, with more recent interest in short-form content intended for streaming and online platforms and games. The expansion of the notion of screen business has led to a series of Screen Australia reports that focused the debate on value frameworks that included cultural, economic and audience values. These reports informed the 2017 Federal Government inquiry into the Australian Film and Television Industry – they do not, however, provide insights into how screen business is incorporated into localised regional economies and they tend to downplay the cultural contributions from the television and advertising sectors. By looking at screen business in four regional Australia cities we demonstrate how four modes of screen production, which include commercial and corporate content, is being made sustainably in the regions and that regional screen content production activities are an important part of the national screen production ecosystem.' (Publication abstract)

'This book provides coverage of the diversity of Australian film and television production between 2000 and 2015. In this period, Australian film and television have been transformed by new international engagements, the emergence of major new talents and a movement away with earlier films’ preoccupation with what it means to be Australian. With original contributions from leading scholars in the field, the collection contains chapters on particular genres (horror, blockbusters and comedy), Indigenous Australian film and television, women’s filmmaking, queer cinema, representations of history, Australian characters in non-Australian films and films about Australians in Asia, as well as chapters on sound in Australian cinema and the distribution of screen content. The book is both scholarly and accessible to the general reader. It will be of particular relevance to students and scholars of Anglophone film and television, as well as to anyone with an interest in Australian culture and creativity.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The three articles in this subsection return to scholarly debates at the core of research into Australian horror movies and Ozploitation cinema. In terms of the former, the horror film remains under-researched in Australian film studies. This is not surprising. On the one hand, since the mid-2000s the Australian film industry has produced a handful of popular, and internationally influential horror movies such as The Babadook (2014), Daybreakers (2009), and Wolf Creek (2005). On the other hand, the majority of Australian horror films rarely receive critical acclaim, nor are they widely discussed in mainstream film criticism; and for every Wolf Creek, there is a long list of movies such as Red Billabong (2016), The Pack (2015), Me and My Mates vs. The Zombie Apocalypse (2015), and There’s Something in the Pilliga (2014) that disappear into the long-tail of the market. Few local horror movies released each year secure cinema release and the average title circulates in home video markets, and/or subscription and pay-per-download services. As a conceptual category, Australian horror movies emerge at the intersection of cult cinema; Australia-international cinema that can be difficult to evaluate on the basis of cultural value (the setting of Triangle [2009, Christopher Smith] for instance is never specified although Australian actors play characters who speak with American accents); and genre film-making long associated with Hollywood-inspired film-making. As a consequence, until quite recently the subject has rarely been central to dominant discourses in Australian film studies concerned with distinguishing Australian cinema as a national cinema.' (Introduction)

'Building on and bringing up to date the material presented in the first installment of Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand, this volume continues the exploration of the cinema produced in Australia and New Zealand since the beginning of the twentieth century. Among the additions to this volume are in-depth treatments of the locations that feature prominently in the countries' cinema. Essays by leading critics and film scholars consider the significance in films of the outback and the beach, which is evoked as a liminal space in Long Weekend and a symbol of death in Heaven's Burning, among other films. Other contributions turn the spotlight on previously unexplored genres and key filmmakers, including Jane Campion, Rolf de Heer, Charles Chauvel, and Gillian Armstrong.

'Accompanying the critical essays in this volume are more than one hundred new film reviews, complemented by full-colour film stills and significantly expanded references for further study. From The Piano to Red Dog, from Pictures to The Orator, Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand 2 completes this comprehensive treatment of two similar – but also different – consistently fascinating national cinemas.' (Publication summary)

'There has been a boom in Australian horror movie production in recent years. Daybreakers (2010), Wolf Creek (2005), Rogue (2007), Undead (2003), Black Water (2008), and Storm Warning (2006), among others, have all experienced varying degrees of popularity, mainstream visibility and cult success in worldwide horror markets. While Aussie horror's renaissance is widely acknowledged in industry literature, there is limited research into the extent of the boom and the dynamics of production. Consequently, there are few explanations for why and how this surge has occurred. This article argues that the recent growth in Australian horror films has been driven by intersecting international market forces, domestic financing factors and technological change. In so doing, it identifies two distinct tiers of Australian horror film production: ‘mainstream’ and ‘underground’ production, though overlap between these two tiers results in ‘high-end indie’ films capable of cinema release. Each tier represents the high and low ends of Australian horror film production, each with different financing, production and distribution models.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.