Situates Australian cinema in its historical and cultural perspective, offering detailed critiques of key films from 1970 onwards, and using them to illustrate the recent theories on the cinema industries.

Concerned with the period 1970-1987; Dedicated to Bill Bonney, d.1985.

This edited collection assesses the complex historical and contemporary relationships between US and Australian cinema by tapping directly into discussions of national cinema, transnationalism and global Hollywood. While most equivalent studies aim to define national cinema as independent from or in competition with Hollywood, this collection explores a more porous set of relationships through the varied production, distribution and exhibition associations between Australia and the US. To explore this idea, the book investigates the influence that Australia has had on US cinema through the exportation of its stars, directors and other production personnel to Hollywood, while also charting the sustained influence of US cinema on Australia over the last hundred years. It takes two key points in time—the 1920s and 1930s and the last twenty years—to explore how particular patterns of localism, nationalism, colonialism, transnationalism and globalisation have shaped its course over the last century. The contributors re-examine the concept and definition of Australian cinema in regard to a range of local, international and global practices and trends that blur neat categorisations of national cinema. Although this concentration on US production, or influence, is particularly acute in relation to developments such as the opening of international film studios in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and the Gold Coast over the last thirty years, the book also examines a range of Hollywood financed and/or conceived films shot in Australia since the 1920s.

The first comprehensive volume of original essays on Australian screen culture in the twenty-first century. A Companion to Australian Cinema is an anthology of original essays by new and established authors on the contemporary state and future directions of a well-established national cinema. A timely intervention that challenges and expands the idea of cinema, this book brings into sharp focus those facets of Australian cinema that have endured, evolved and emerged in the twenty-first century. The essays address six thematically-organized propositions – that Australian cinema is an Indigenous screen culture, an international cinema, a minor transnational imaginary, an enduring auteur-genre-landscape tradition, a televisual industry and a multiplatform ecology. Offering fresh critical perspectives and extending previous scholarship, case studies range from The Lego Movie, Mad Max, and Australian stars in Hollywood, to transnational co-productions, YouTube channels, transmedia and nature-cam documentaries. New research on trends – such as the convergence of television and film, digital transformations of screen production and the shifting roles of women on and off-screen – highlight how established precedents have been influenced by new realities beyond both cinema and the national. Written in an accessible style that does not require knowledge of cinema studies or Australian studies Presents original research on Australian actors, such as Cate Blanchett and Chris Hemsworth, their training, branding, and path from Australia to Hollywood Explores the films and filmmakers of the Blak Wave and their challenge to Australian settler-colonial history and white identity Expands the critical definition of cinema to include YouTube channels, transmedia documentaries, multiplatform changescapes and cinematic remix Introduces readers to founding texts in Australian screen studies A Companion to Australian Cinema is an ideal introductory text for teachers and students in areas including film and media studies, cultural and gender studies, and Australian history and politics, as well as a valuable resource for educators and other professionals in the humanities and creative arts.

From The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906 to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Australia and New Zealand have made a unique impact on international cinema. This book celebrates the commercially successful narrative feature films produced by these cultures as well as key documentaries, shorts, and independent films. It also invokes issues involving national identity, race, history, and the ability of two small film cultures to survive the economic and cultural threat of Hollywood. Chapters on well known films and directors, such as The Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982), The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993), Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001), and Rabbit Proof Fence (Philip Noyce, 2002), are included with less popular but equally important films and filmmakers, such as Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955), They're a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966), Vigil (Vincent Ward, 1984), and The Goddess of 1967 (Clara Law, 2000).

This introduction to the new Australian film industry explores prominent directors and stars, themes, styles, and evolving genres in an analysis of key films. The evolution of genres peculiar to Australia and adaptations of conventional Hollywood forms such as the musical and the road movie are examined through readings of landmark films, including Picnic at Hanging Rock, Mad Max trilogy, and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The key issue of the revival--the definition, representation, and propagation of a national image--is woven through the analysis.

Publisher Description

This study is a collection of critical and scholarly analyses of the organisation of the Australian Film Industry since 1990. Particular emphasis is put on globalisation, authorship, national narrative and film aesthetics.

Whether it was Jane Campion's The Piano, Mel Gibson in Mad Max, Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee, or The Lord of the Rings saga, we have all experienced the cinema of Australia and New Zealand. This book is an introduction and guide to the film of Australia and New Zealand. With entries on many exceptional producers, directors, writers and actors, as well as the films indicated above and many others, this reference also presents the early pioneers, the film companies and government bodies, and much more in its hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries. Through a chronology that shows how far these cinemas have come in a short time and an introduction that presents them more broadly, a clear portrait of the two countries' motion pictures emerge. The bibliography is an excellent source for further reading.

To date, there has been little sustained attention given to the historical cinema relations between Australia and Asia. This is a significant omission given Australia’s geo-political position and the place Asia has held in the national imaginary, oscillating between threat and opportunity. Many accounts of Australian cinema begin with the 1970s film revival, placing “Asian Australian cinema” within a post-revival schema of multicultural or diasporic cinema and ignoring Asian Australian connections prior to the revival. Transnational Australian Cinema charts a history of Asian Australian cinema, encompassing the work of diasporic Asian filmmakers, films featuring images of Asia and Asians, films produced by Australians working in Asia’s film industries or addressed at Asian audiences, and Asian films that use Australian resources, including locations and personnel. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the book considers diasporic Asian histories, the impact of government immigration and film policies on representation, and the new aesthetic styles and production regimes created by filmmakers who have forged links, both through roots and routes, with Asia. This expanded history of Asian Australian cinema allows for a renewed discussion of so called dormant periods in the nation’s film history. In this respect, the mapping of an expanded history of cinema practices contributes to our broader aim to rethink the transnationalism of Australian cinema.