Film
Australian Film: Cultures, identities, texts by Adi Wimmer
The Cinema of Australia and New Zealand edited by Geoff Mayer and Keith Beattie
It is one thing for Macbeth (of whom more in a moment) to chide himself for ‘vaulting ambition’; it is not, though, the first stick we would choose to beat Australian cinema with. Now, with 2006 nearly over and everybody saying what a good year it has been for local films, I want to identify ‘ambition’ as a key element in the making of this ‘good year’.
... (read more)Australian Film & TV Companion: Second edition by Tony Harrison
Phallic Panic: Film, horror and the primal uncanny by Barbara Creed
Though we have seen periods during which Australian cinema has been synonymous with period-set narratives and idealised evocations of the outback, there has always been a darker side to our cinematic imagination, a gritty, hard-edged element that is just as crucial to this country’s feature film output as are the sepia-tinged dreamscapes. Many of the pivotal films of the Australian New Wave brought a vivid, finely judged aesthetic to the bleakest of subject matter. Fred Schepisi’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) conjured a harrowing tragedy of grisly murders and manhunts, while Peter Weir’s darkly comic feature début, The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), presented a paranoid, murderous rural community whose raison d’être was maintaining its seclusion, even if that meant killing any outsiders who found their way into town.
... (read more)