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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Sixteen-year-old Jamie feels isolated by the poverty of his surroundings, his lack of a father figure, and his mother's preoccupation with his younger, more demanding brothers. So when he falls in with the charismatic and much older John, he is slowly drawn into John's world of homophobia, violence, and murder.
Notes
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The trailer for this film is available to view via YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvu_tBQgZyI (Sighted: 19/7/2012)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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The Isolation at the Heart of Australian Horror
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , November 2020;'Australian horror films have always had a unique fascination with the continent’s landscape. Though the genre has evolved from the Ozploitation era into more complex territory, it remains moulded by the terra nullius myth and a colonial sense of disconnection from the land. '
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Dangerous Locations : The Missing Person in Australian Cinema
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Screen Education , no. 95 2019; (p. 64-71) -
Carving Out an Australian Sensory Cinema
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Screen in the 2000s 2018; (p. 261-283) Examines a set of films that ground narrative-based stories in tactile experiences. -
Subverting the Serial Gaze : Reimagining the Serial Killer in Australian Fiction
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Long Paddock , vol. 77 no. 2 2018;'Justin Kurzel’s 2011 film Snowtown opens with a shot of the flat, South Australian countryside from a moving car window. A pulse-like soundtrack scores the scene. After a moment a monotone voice-over begins: a character based on convicted serial killer James Vlassakis narrates a dream he had, which climaxes with the sparse description of a Chihuahua yapping out of a gash from a man’s neck that looks like a ‘big fucking mouth’. This chilling opening sets the tone for the rest of the film: a relentless, suffocating, deeply unsettling fictionalisation of the infamous ‘bodies in the barrels’ serial murders that took place in the northern suburbs of Adelaide between 1992 and 1999, and which culminated in the discovery of eight dismembered bodies submerged in drums of hydrochloric acid, concealed in a disused bank vault in Snowtown, a small town 145 kilometres north of Adelaide.' (Introduction)
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Antipodean Dream, Antipodean Nightmare : Spatial Ideology and Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , May no. 61 2017;'This essay begins from a simple premise: determinations of ‘Australianness’ and ‘the Australian character’ have been and continue to be inextricably linked to the fetishisation and reification of space in popular cultural manifestations of Australia. This is evident throughout white Australian cultural histories, as well as white histories of Australian culture. Perhaps this is a tautological claim in relation to any conception of nation, tied as such conceptions are to modern practices of cartography and geography. However, it is my contention that whilst notions of space play a determinant role in general vis-à-vis the configuration of nation (and national character), they play a larger role than usual in the configuration of ‘Australia’; the function of space in the conception of Australia is less modulated through competing discourses such as class, ethnicity and religion than in other national examples. This emphasis continues to privilege a mythical vision of space, with terra Australis incognita reified according to either of two dominant paradigms: the landscape is cultivated as a blank space offering the egalitarian opportunity for ‘man’ to reassess and reassert ‘his’ place in the natural order; or the landscape is cultivated as a sublime object—grand, and at times terrifying in its vastness and emptiness, a spectral antipodean environment that seems to ‘naturally’ lend itself to the gothic mode.' (Introduction)
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A Haunting Vision of True Horrors
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Age , 14 May 2011; (p. 19)
— Review of Snowtown 2010 single work film/TV -
Spotlight
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 15 May 2011; (p. 22)
— Review of Snowtown 2010 single work film/TV -
Society Seen at Its Rawest
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 14 - 15 May 2011; (p. 4-5)
— Review of Snowtown 2010 single work film/TV -
True Tale of Horror
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 19 May 2011; (p. 4)
— Review of Snowtown 2010 single work film/TV -
It Cuts to the Bone
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 21 May 2011; (p. 36)
— Review of Snowtown 2010 single work film/TV -
Film Festival Opts for Darkness with Snowtown Horror Story
2010
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 1 December 2010; (p. 16) Garry Maddox reports on the inclusion of Snowtown in the program for the 2011 Adelaide Film Festival. Maddox also speaks with the film's producer, Anna McLeish. -
Families Upset by Snowtown Film
2011
single work
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— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 27 February 2011; (p. 26) -
Blizzard of Controversy Clears as Snowtown Debuts
2011
single work
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— Appears in: The Age , 28 February 2011; (p. 19) -
Bodies-in-Barrels Killings Make a Harrowing Movie
2011
single work
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— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 26-27 February 2011; (p. 9) -
Untitled
2011
single work
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— Appears in: The Australian , 20 April 2011; (p. 15)
Awards
- 2012 winner AFCA Film Awards — Best Screenplay
- 2012 winner AFCA Film Awards — Best Film
- 2012 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting
- 2011 winner Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards — Best Adapted Screenplay
- 2011 nominated Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards — Best Film
- Snowtown, Blyth - Bute - Port Broughton area, Mid North South Australia, South Australia,