AustLit

'My keyword today is action. No, it’s not about Meaghan Morris the action hero! But it is about Meaghan Morris as a woman of action. It is also about Meaghan’s work on action cinema and cultural research as engaged scholarship in action.

'I want to begin in the official genre of a keyword.

'Keyword: Action. Action refers to a genre of cinema, a culture industry and a cultural practice of ‘doing’. As a body genre derived from contact sports such as martial arts, its narrative is characterised by the rivalry and combat between two or more opposing individuals or groups (what she calls ‘a transnational mode of historical fiction’). Morris discusses the contact narrative of action cinema as a new transnational genre with an industrial history that precedes Hollywood-based beginnings in the 1970s (with films such as The Towering Inferno and Jaws). She highlights the formative role Hong Kong has played in this history since the 1950s, with the introduction of swordplay films by the Shaw Brothers studio, its co-productions with Japan, Thailand, Korea and Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s, and the expansion of its ‘direct to video’ industry in the 1980s and 1990s. This industry is characterised as a minor economy consisting of low budget, fly-by-night production using local cast and crew; shot in cheap locations such as slums, factories and disused buildings; erratic global distribution; and exhibited through informal spaces of consumption.' (Introduction)

'To date, there has been little sustained attention given to the historical cinema relations between Australia and Asia. This is a significant omission given Australia's geo-political position and the place Asia has held in the national imaginary, oscillating between threat and opportunity. Moreover, many accounts of Australian cinema begin with the 1970s film revival, placing 'Asian Australian cinema' within a post-revival schema of multicultural or diasporic cinema and ignoring Asian Australian connections prior to the revival. Transnational Australian Cinema charts a history of Asian Australian cinema, encompassing the work of diasporic Asian filmmakers, films featuring images of Asia and Asians, films produced by Australians working in Asia's film industries or addressed at Asian audiences, and Asian films that utilize Australian resources, including locations and personnel. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the book considers diasporic Asian histories, the impact of government immigration and film policies on representation, and the new aesthetic styles and production regimes created by filmmakers who have forged links, both through roots and routes, with Asia. Our expanded history of Asian Australian cinema facilitated by the emphasis on transnational film practices allows for a renewed discussion of so called dormant periods in the nation's film history. In this respect, the mapping of an expanded history of cinema practices contributes to our broader aim to rethink the transnationalism of Australian cinema.' (Publication summary)