Studies in Australasian Cinema最新文献

{"title":"Queer disorientations in Only the Brave, Head On, and Blessed","authors":"K. McWilliam, J. Gildersleeve","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2022.2095160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2022.2095160","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, we explore the orientation of queer bodies to the city – and to Lisa French’s (2013) motif of ‘looking from the largely industrialised west at the city’ in particular – in three films directed by Ana Kokkinos: Only the Brave (1994), Head On (1998), and Blessed (2009). In doing so, we take up Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenological approach to focus on Alex (played by Elena Mandalis) in Only the Brave; Ari (played by Alex Dimitriades) in Head On; and Arthur/‘Roo’ (played by Eamon Farren) in Blessed. We argue that when each queer protagonist looks to the city they are not only multiply disoriented, their disorientations are also specifically triggered by earlier enunciations of queer desire. We argue that these physical, psychological, temporal, and spatial disorientations serve multiple purposes across these films. They symbolise the phenomenological disorientations of queer embodiment; disorientate viewers to offer them a queer spectatorial opportunity; and proffer the ‘hope of new directions’ [Ahmed, Sara. 2006b. Queer Phenomenology. Durham, NC: Duke UP] in the depiction of queerness in Australian cinema.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49494091","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":"After the National Film Unit, before social media: Wellington tourism film’s urban narratives and production dynamics 1991–2008","authors":"Diego Bonelli","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2022.2095159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2022.2095159","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article analyses the development of Wellington tourism film from 1991 to 2008, release years of Absolutely Positively Wellington and Spoil Yourself in Wellington TV commercials, respectively. While performing the textual analysis of five case studies released for domestic TV circulation, it examines their underlying tourism marketing and place-branding dynamics in the broader context of the political, institutional and cultural transformations that marked New Zealand and its capital city from the late 1980s onward. Such political and social context, characterised by the privatisation and sale of public assets and businesses, the transformation of public institutions into profit-driven corporations and the closure or downsizing of government departments and government-led institutions, coincided with the reorganisation of Wellington's economic, institutional and social assets, with the reshaping of the city's identity and with the redefinition of local tourism marketing strategies. This article argues that Wellington tourism film's institutional background started to be increasingly characterised by a process of growing and deepened interaction and partnership between local tourism bodies, creative agencies and private stakeholders. It also intends to trace the succession of different but interconnected urban narratives that informed local tourism film production, before the contemporary narratives about Wellington as a ‘creative city’ took hold.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41991128","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":"Power, identity and production: issue 1 introduction","authors":"A. Lambert","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2022.2059912","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2022.2059912","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44823225","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":"Australian queer screen stakeholders and creative artists: perceptions of value, motivation and impact of LGBTQ+ Australian film","authors":"Rob Cover","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2022.2037045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2022.2037045","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper reports findings from interviews with key Australian stakeholders involved in Australian films with gender- and sexually-diverse (LGBTQ+) characters, themes and narratives. The paper found that directors, creative producers, screenwriters and actors involved stakeholders of Australian LGBTQ+ film expressed a desire to impact their audiences in ways that emphasise the value of entertainment texts for minority representation, pedagogy and social change beyond pure storytelling. This paper presents an account of three key frameworks through which film stakeholders expressed their understanding of – and motivation towards – impact beyond storytelling: (i) as filling a gap in LGBTQ+ representation in contrast to what was otherwise perceived as relative invisibility; (ii) their perception as stakeholders dealing with LGBTQ+ content as having a special role as ‘educators’ for the benefit of vulnerable youth; and (iii) an understanding of their texts as contributing to social change in Australia, including wider acceptance of LGBTQ+ persons, family members and communities. A significant finding from this study is that screen media films about LGBTQ+ topics continue to be perceived as playing a role connected with but exceeding entertainment.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49248037","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":"Carnivalesque subversion and the narrative gaze of children: Taika Waititi’s Boy (2010), Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), and Jojo Rabbit (2019)","authors":"Sanra Reji, Aparna Nandha","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2022.2050591","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2022.2050591","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article studies the carnivalesque subversion of oppressive systems using the narrative gaze of children in Taika Waititi’s three films, Boy (2010), Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), and Jojo Rabbit (2019). Waititi has a wide range of filmography to his assets and his films, while comically articulating his politics, incorporate new vocabularies to tackle various forms of oppression. The selected films are of both local and international nature, and they voice their politics through the varying presence of carnivalesque motifs of subversion. The current paper attempts to investigate them using Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque. By arguing that these films are a vehicle of his personal and political credence, this paper attempts to bridge the gap in theorizing Waititi’s filmography despite being critically acclaimed.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45282450","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":"‘Post goblins’ and ‘preditors’: identities, experiences, and contributions of women in Australian screen postproduction and visual effects sectors 2020/2021","authors":"Julia Erhart, K. Dooley","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2022.2037814","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2022.2037814","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The first 20 years of the twenty-first century have seen a flourishing of research about women film and media creatives, their industrial positioning, and media output in industries around the globe, but overwhelmingly this research has focussed on the woman director. Women below-the-line workers, their workplace experiences, and their impression of their own creative contributions, particularly in areas of editing, sound design, and visual effects, have been glaringly absent. This paper aims to spotlight the under-examined working conditions and creative contributions of women working in Australian postproduction and visual effects (VFX) areas, what their experiences and perceptions tell us about the sector more broadly at a time of decreasing job security and increasing demand for screen content since the time of COVID-19, and their perceptions about their own creative contributions. These findings are based on our analysis of semi-structured interviews that we carried out with 11 women workers in a range of geographical locations, of varying ethnicities, sexualities, and ages, and at different career points. The insights generated by these interviews speak to the challenges faced by these workers and their perceptions of their work and fill a gap in the feminist production studies literature, about women, postproduction, and VFX.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45904969","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":"Australian Genre Film","authors":"Liam Ball","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2022.2037815","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2022.2037815","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43033902","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":"Beyond exploitation: preface to issue 3","authors":"A. Lambert","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2021.1993566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2021.1993566","url":null,"abstract":"As editor in chief of Studies in Australasian Cinema, I’m delighted that we are closing out 2021 with a special issue devoted to ‘Independent and Low Budget Filmmaking in Australia’. In a country where the existence and development of specifically Australian stories cannot be taken for granted, culture, nation and industry work in an explicitly interchangeable way. Tom O’Regan (1996) has famously argued that Australian cinema is a ‘messy hybrid’ or a ‘quasi-object’ that both services and reflects a medium size English-language population and market. So, the definition of what makes a film or TV program Australian is contextual and the borders of such definitions are frequently elastic. For the independent and/or low budget, the exploitation and celebration of Australianness are central to much related scholarship that attends to the economic, politicised and artistic aspects of screen productions; borne simultaneously of an absence of funds and a brash self-reflective cultural urgency. The ‘independent’ and ‘low budget’, have been seen to shape classic national coming of age stories, tales of Australian colonial history, and most noticeably the resurgent nationalism grossly foregrounded in second wave Australian cinema in 1970s and 80s. Low budget and independent screen texts have historically exemplified and played on the perceived extremes Australian characteristics – broadly referred to as Ozploitation (see Martin 2010). Our guest editors, Noel Maloney and Glenda Hambly have expertly drawn together approaches to Australian film that build on, and move away from, the familiar studies of genre cinema (or colloquially Ozploitation) often relied on to make sense of the cheap, crazy locally made cinema of the 70s and 80s (the naughty, rough and rude tradition that produced theMad Max andWolf Creek films). The discursive attention in this collection to contexts of history and contemporary production extend the story of the independent and the low budget as integral to the developing, contemporary, and changing Australian nation – culturally and technologically. This issue charts new conversations about the independent and low budget in Australian cinema, in various relationships to national industries, cultural experiences and as images and ideas about Australianness. At the time of writing, New SouthWales is about to emerge from 106 days of COVID related lockdown, and Victoria’s emergence from its sixth lockdown looks set to follow in the coming months. Beginning new discussions and exploring ideas that are central to the cinema seems only fitting as the larger populations and cities begin to ‘open up’. My heartfelt thanks and appreciation to our guest editors and authors who have worked hard to produce this collection in extremely trying times for those who work in screen scholarship in Australia. As always, enjoy this special edition of Studies in Australasian Cinema.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41491036","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":"Leveraging collaboration: script development processes in low budget Australian feature filmmaking","authors":"Susan Cake, Sean Maher, Tony McGrath","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2021.1993650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2021.1993650","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT For independent Australian filmmakers working outside traditional funding sources, the script often provides the sole means of raising finance to take the film into production. In the case of the low budget Australian feature films Pimped ([2018], “Directed by David Barker. Playground Films.” Apple TV) and Watch the Sunset ([2017], “Directed by Tristan Barr and Michael Gosden.” Barr Lipp Productions. STAN), however, script development was elevated and sustained by the filmmakers resisting a rigid adherence to writing, directing, and producing roles and opening up input from actors. This research employs case study analysis supported by interviews with the writers/director of Pimped and co-writer of Watch the Sunset to examine the script development processes that led to the successful completion and distribution of two low budget Australian feature films. Born out of the necessity to self-fund development, Pimped and Watch the Sunset provide insight into script development processes that value flexibility and receptiveness to the contributions of creative practitioners traditionally divided by above and below-the-line roles and exemplify how creative collaboration can facilitate successful development of low budget films operating beyond the constraints of screen funding bodies.","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44264379","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":"Introduction","authors":"G. Hambly, N. Maloney","doi":"10.1080/17503175.2021.1993649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2021.1993649","url":null,"abstract":"Welcome to this special issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema on low budget, independent filmmaking inAustralia, a sector that has produced some of themost powerful, recent success stories inAustralian cinema. To cite just two, BenjaminGilmour’s Jirga (2018) was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and Sophie Hyde’s Berlin and Sundance winner, 52 Tuesdays (2013), garnered global critical acclaim. The low budget sector is noted for bringing new approaches to filmmaking. Unhindered by industry conventions, distributor interventions and screen agency dictates, filmmakers are freer to pursue their passion projects. The sector is an important source of new creative input into the industry. It is also an entry point for new key creatives, cast and crew. All this is well understood, but less well known is the extent and depth of the independent low budget sector in Australia. In 2018, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) introduced a Best Indie Film Award for films budgeted under $2 million. The point of the award was to shine a ‘brighter spotlight’ on films ‘deserving of greater representation in our industry’ (2018). Indie films comprised almost 50% of all feature films entered in the AACTA awards between 2018 and 2020 (AACTA). As Screen Australia (2020) notes, in the last decade 52% of Australian feature films had budgets of less than $3 million, with 25% produced below $1 million. Given the importance of lowbudgetfilms toAustralian screen culture, it is an appropriate time for a Special Edition that investigates the opportunities and challenges filmmakers face in the pre-production, production and distribution of their films, as well as the impact national funding agency policy and programmes have on their projects. The adventures offered by low budget filmmaking can be exhilarating. Yet, as these articles demonstrate, working in the sector is not for the faint hearted. Behind the heroic narratives that often shape the reception of successful low budget films are sobering stories of financial hardship, production challenges and lack of distribution. Employing case study methodologies and drawing on interviews with producers, directors, screenwriters and actors, the four articles in the issue profile ten low budget Australian feature films produced over the last five years. Building on emerging scholarship in the field, the articles bring together a range of disciplines including creative labour theory, screen, screenwriting and narrative studies. All of the films profiled in these articles are drawn from the AACTA Indie Awards lists, 2018–2020. While they were all made for far less than $2 million, the AACTA Award definition provided a useful means of identifying a group of films for","PeriodicalId":51952,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Australasian Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49458394","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}