AUSTRALIAN CINEMA

1. AUSTRALIAN CINEMA How to ‘think’ Australian cinema… 1. Australian cinema as a national cinema 2. Australian cinema as international cinema

2. References: Collins & Davis (2004) Australian Cinema after Mabo Dermody & Jacka (1988) The Screening of Australia Vol 2 Jacka (1997) ‘Film’ in Cunningham & Turner, The Media in Australia O’Regan (1996) Australian National Cinema O’Regan (2001) in your Reader Turner (1997) in your Reader Verhoeven (2002) ‘Film and Video’ in Cunningham & Turner, The Media & Communications in Australia

3. Australian cinema as a national cinema • Recurrent themes, styles, character types, settings, narrative patterns 2.A particular industry context – production, policy, distribution & exhibition, audience etc. 3. Cinema understood in relation to the national culture, national identity – by audiences, critics, film-makers, policy-makers etc. 4. A ‘national cinema’ in relation to Hollywood

4. Australian cinema as international cinema 1. Not a national cinema developing independently of Hollywood, but a cinema which is part of international cinema. 2. Internationalisation of film production and marketing -- co-production, ‘runaway productions’; 3. Australian actors, directors, cameramen, designers etc in Hollywood 4. Australian films drawing on mainstream or ‘trans-national’ genres – creative interaction between Australian and international/Hollywood styles

5. O’Regan (1996) – Australian films in relation to Hollywood: ‘playing up’ or ‘playing down’ Australianness O’Regan (2001) – ‘local’/national multicultural film – critical nationalism (Head On); versus a ‘universal’/trans-national film (Dark City) Dermody & Jacka (1988) – two discourses: ‘cultural nationalism’ (socially concerned, distinctively Australian, culturally worthy) versus ‘commercialism’ (commercially-oriented entertainment) Collins & Davis (2004) – ‘cultural-interventionist’ versus ‘commercial-industrial’ PLUS ‘inward-looking Australian films’ versus ‘outward-oriented international films’

6. A ‘new’ Australian cinema? (1990s-2005) Turner: ‘lack of self-consciousness about national origins …their range of styles and subjects … their disrespectful indigenisation of mainstream commercial genres’ … The contradictions between mainstream style and cultural nationalism ‘reprocessed into a convincing, unselfconscious hybridity of structure and content’ (Priscilla? Love and Other Catastrophes? Two Hands?) Jacka (1997): Babe: an Aust film (scripted, produced, directed in Australia) but also international cooperation … ‘the possible future of the film industry — international as well as national, imbricated with narrative style and theme that is different from a H’wood blockbuster but sits comfortably alongside it

7. Verhoeven (2002): • films and filmmakers happily embedded in both the local and the global • addressing ‘niche’ audiences internationally • deploying narrative styles and themes which are different from big-budget Hollywood films but sit comfortably beside them • (Mad Max? Two Hands?

8. Australian feature film production by decade

9. Australian cinema revival • Phases: • ‘ocker’ films (early-mid 1970s) – contemporary, ‘masculine, populist and cheerfully vulgar’ • historical ‘period’ films (late-1970s-1980s) – Picnic at Hanging Rock, My Brilliant Career… • ‘blockbuster’ films commercially oriented (1980s). Big budget, H’wood genre influence: Snowy River, Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee • Multicultural/urban comedies and the ‘glitter cycle’ (1990s) – The Heartbreak Kid, Priscilla, Muriel’s Wedding, Strictly Ballroom • 2000s? ‘post-Mabo’ films … urban comedies

10. Film and identity Film and history Film and landscape