{"title":"Three-tier structure of the New Zealand feature film industry","authors":"Natàlia Ferrer-Roca","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2017.1385135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2017.1385135","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper aims to apply the three-tier feature film structure to the contemporary New Zealand filmmaking context in order to add clarity to existing distinctions between the different types of film production occurring in Twenty-first Century New Zealand. Those are subject to, and emerge from, sometimes very different institutional and financing arrangements, and thus entail different expectations. The paper takes an institutional political economy perspective and is organised as follows. First, it provides an overview of how the feature film industry can be portrayed as segmented by various overlapping (three) tiers of production, which may differ between Hollywood and smaller film industries in countries around the world. Second, the paper applies the three-tier structure within the contemporary New Zealand filmmaking context. Third, the paper explains the characteristics of every feature film tier by acknowledging their distinctiveness and highlighting the benefits they deliver to the New Zealand filmmaking industry. Finally, it concludes that all three-tier of feature film production have been crucial for generating and sustaining a feature film industry in a small English-speaking country such as New Zealand.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"102 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503175.2017.1385135","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46917873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Divas down under: the circulation of Asta Nielsen's and Francesca Bertini’s films in Australian cinemas in the 1910s","authors":"Julie K. Allen","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2017.1385142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2017.1385142","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The early Australian cinema market was a lucrative target for export-dependent European film producers, from the French Pathé Frérès to the Danish Nordisk Films Kompagni. By 1913, cinema attendance was a national pastime in Australia, with approximately 12% of the population going to the pictures every Saturday night. Australian film production was innovative but too limited to meet domestic demand. As a result of this disparity in supply and demand, coupled with the innovative artistry of European silent films, a significant percentage of the films shown in Australia in the pre-World War I years were imported from Europe. Initially, most of these films were advertised simply by their title and occasionally the production company. Despite such minimal branding, many of these films were in continuous circulation on urban and provincial cinema circuits for years at a time. However, with the emergence of the monopoly-distribution system and associated rise of the star culture that sold films on the strength of an actor or actress's name, several European stars began to develop an devoted Australian following. Most of the early European stars who made a name for themselves in Australia were women, notably the Danish actress Asta Nielsen and the Italian actress Francesca Bertini. This article maps the scope of these female European stars’ popularity in pre-World War I Australia and explores the circulation conditions that facilitated their stardom, particularly in relation to the transformation of Australian production, distribution, and exhibition systems in the early 1910s, as well as during and after World War I.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"59 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503175.2017.1385142","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46443078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Returning to Australian horror film and Ozploitation cinema debate","authors":"M. Ryan, B. Goldsmith","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2017.1308901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2017.1308901","url":null,"abstract":"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 (Jennifer Kent, 2014), Daybreakers (Michael and Peter Spierig, 2009), and Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 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 (Luke Sparke, 2016), The Pack (Nick Robertson, 2015), Me and My Mates vs. The Zombie Apocalypse (Declan Shrubb, 2015), and There's Something in the Pilliga (Dane Millerd, 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 filmmaking long associated with Hollywood-inspired filmmaking. 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...","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"2 - 4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503175.2017.1308901","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49589392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The beak that grips: maternal indifference, ambivalence and the abject in The Babadook","authors":"Shelley Buerger","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2017.1308903","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2017.1308903","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article investigates the depiction of maternal indifference and ambivalence in Jennifer Kent’s film The Babadook. Using the techniques of psychoanalytical criticism I draw on Kristeva’s [1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press] theory of abjection and Barbara Creed’s [1993. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge] application of this to the horror genre to explore the film’s portrayal of repressed grief and the resulting traumatic disruption to the mother/child bond. Taking the protagonist’s troubled relationship with both her son and her bereaved status as my starting point, I argue that The Babadook represents a reimagining of maternal abjection. Both Kristeva and Creed posit that abjection is first experienced as the result of the mother’s refusal to relinquish her hold on the child and to move past the intense dyadic relationship of the infant period. The Babadook inverts this psychic narrative by positioning Amelia’s refusal of this relationship and her lack of proper maternal feeling as the site of her abjection. In this reimagining of maternal abjection, The Babadook presents audiences with a representation of maternal experience that is shocking and confronting. While the narrative arc is ultimately one of redemption the ambiguous ending emphasises the lingering unease inspired by maternal indifference.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"33 - 44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503175.2017.1308903","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43643975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fishing the waters of life: Zane Grey’s White Death, exploitation film and the Great Barrier Reef","authors":"L. Speed","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2017.1308906","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2017.1308906","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Edwin G. Bowen’s White Death (1936) is an Australian–American film about shark fishing that stars the American novelist and fisherman Zane Grey as himself. Set mainly at the Great Barrier Reef, it has a semi-fictional plot about Grey’s quest to kill a shark in the face of opposition from an anti-fishing activist, Newton Smith (Alfred Frith). Although White Death was financially unsuccessful and has received little attention in histories of Australian film or Grey’s life, it is significant in several ways. The film is unusual among early Australian productions for combining elements of the genres of travelogue documentary, fictional adventure film and exotic exploitation film. It reflects an American perspective of Australia as an exotic location. White Death is also linked to the interwar development of tourism at the Great Barrier Reef and foreshadows the growth of the environmental conservation movement.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"17 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503175.2017.1308906","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45663414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Babadook and the haunted space between high and low genres in the Australian horror tradition","authors":"J. Balanzategui","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2017.1308907","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2017.1308907","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The horror genre is a particularly fraught category in academic and mainstream critical discourse about Australian film genres. Australian horror films are often framed as either ‘Australian Gothic’ or ‘Ozploitation,’ terms that prioritise issues of national identity, class and taste rather than genre. The oppositional relationship of these terms presents an obstacle to the widespread acceptance – both scholarly and popular – of local horror films. This is illuminated by a comparison of two recent Australian horror releases and their domestic receptions, Wolf Creek 2 (McLean, Greg. 2014. Wolf Creek 2. Film. Adelaide: Duo Art Productions and Emu Creek Pictures) and The Babadook (Kent, Jennifer. 2014. The Babadook. Blu-Ray DVD. Melbourne: Umbrella Entertainment). Wolf Creek 2 was one of the most lucrative Australian films of 2014, however it was critically panned in large part due to its perceived commercialism and low-genre status. By contrast, The Babadook was the most critically praised Australian film of 2014, however the film received a limited domestic release. This paper explores how both The Babadook’s meagre domestic release and its near-universal critical praise can be related to its association with the high-art Australian Gothic tradition. Yet the film unsettles firmly entrenched art/genre, nationalism/commercialism dichotomies.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"18 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503175.2017.1308907","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46720943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Screen memories: film’s knowing and historical trauma in The Tracker","authors":"M. Bullock","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2016.1274012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2016.1274012","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper examines Rolf de Heer’s 2002 film, ‘The Tracker’, in the context of the ‘history war’ debates relating to frontier violence that were rehearsed in the Australian public sphere during the 1990s/2000s. I examine how ‘The Tracker’ challenges the very terms underpinning conventional forms of historiography, wedded to discourses of ‘fact’ and ‘truth’, in the way it investigates what it means to ‘screen’ memory within the context of the politics of the present. Focusing on ‘The Tracker's' self-conscious use of Peter Coad's arresting paintings of frontier violence, I argue that ‘The Tracker’ develops a nuanced engagement with frontier history in the way it highlights the dialectics of ‘revealing’ and ‘concealing’ – rupture and disavowal – at play in the nation’s ‘screening’ of frontier violence.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":"10 1","pages":"306 - 323"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503175.2016.1274012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59972993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yasmine dir, S. Kamaluddin, D. B. Starrs, Sharia Law
{"title":"Authentic Muslima, the national imaginary of Bruneian cinema and Yasmine (dir. Siti Kamaluddin 2014)","authors":"Yasmine dir, S. Kamaluddin, D. B. Starrs, Sharia Law","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2016.1175047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2016.1175047","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Amid concerns about the disappearance of national/cultural specificity due to globalisation, this paper questions the notion of Bruneian cinema as a distinct (if emerging) nationalised imaginary, using the example of Brunei’s first feature-length commercial film, Yasmine (Siti Kamaluddin 2014). Many Asian cinemas have de-territorialised, obsequiously promoting the secular, democratic norms of mainstream Hollywood, but the Sultanate, with its national philosophy of MIB (Malay Islamic Monarchy) and its recent implementation of Sharia Law, would, some Western critics apparently expect, push Islamic ideologies for its state-sanctioned media, including traditionally repressive, misogynistic expectations of the ‘authentic’ Muslima [Ahmed, Leila. 1999. “Women Living under Muslim Laws, Dossier 25.” A Border Passage. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. http://wrrc.wluml.org/node/465]. As with some Middle Eastern countries, such Western critics suggest, Bruneian women may be forced to cover themselves; abstain from driving, education or other means of self-empowerment; and submit to harsh, court-imposed punishments for sexual promiscuity; with the media duly promoting such norms. At the very least, Brunei’s entertainment media might soon resemble Islamic Turkey’s ‘Milli cinema’, which ‘brought Islam back into the movies and showed respect for Islam [and in which a] common theme [ … ] was to show characters that had adopted western values but who became unhappy and unsatisfied by those values’ [Yorulmaz, Bilal, and William L. Blizek. 2014. “Islam in Turkish Cinema.” Journal of Religion and Film 18 (2): 8]. What then of Yasmine, a Brunei government-funded film from a female director about a martial arts-obsessed schoolgirl who happily defies her father, rarely wears a veil, enthusiastically chases boys and drives a racy, eye-catching car? I ask how this national cultural artefact sits within the theocracy’s attempts to maintain its citizenry’s adherence to the tenets of Islam, given its foregrounding of a narrative promoting female self-empowerment? Furthermore, this paper asks why Brunei has failed to ride the digital film-making revolution, to the extent Lacaba states ‘Brunei has no film industry to speak of’ [2000. The Films of ASEAN. ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information]. Inconclusively perhaps, I propose this recent advance stems from a benevolent monarch’s commendable efforts to modernise, rather than historicise, Islam in Brunei generally and MIB, including Sharia Law, specifically, or else is part of an elaborate ruse to convince the Western world that women will not become second-class citizens in the new Brunei, ruled as it may be according to traditionally barbaric and misogynistic Sharia Law.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":"10 1","pages":"278 - 292"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503175.2016.1175047","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59970651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}