AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'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.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Contents
- Where I'm Calling From : An American-Australian Cinema?, single work criticism (p. 1-15)
-
Rudimentary Modernism : Ken G. Hall, Rear-Projection and 1930s Hollywood,
single work
criticism
Explores Ken G. Hall's film-making career, with a particular focus on his use (unusual in the Australian industry) of the rear-projection system in the 1930s at Cinesound.
-
Simulated Scenery : Travel Cinema, Special Effects and For the Term of His Natural Life,
single work
criticism
Examines Norman Dawn's For the Term of His Natural Life as an example of 'sojourner cinema': that is, a film preoccupied with travel and location but which is neither set in the film-maker's place of origin nor a film of diaspora or exile.
-
Representations and Hybridizations in First Nation Cinema : Change and Newness by Fusion,
single work
criticism
Explores the connections between Australian First Nation cinema and American cinema, particularly American genre cinema, through early representations of First Nations people by colonial film-makers; through bushranger films and their connection to westerns; and through the careers of Tracey Moffatt and Ivan Sen.
- Of Mothers and Madwomen : Mining the Emotional Terrain of Toni Collette’s Anti-Star Persona, single work criticism (p. 91-114)
-
Accented Relations : Mad Max on US Screens,
single work
criticism
Tracks the American film industry's changing relationship to the Mad Max films over the course of forty years, from Mad Max to Mad Max: Fury Road.
-
Talking Trash with Tarantino : Auteurism, Aesthetics and Authority in Not Quite Hollywood,
single work
criticism
Examines the ongoing influence of Australian exploitation cinema on the work of American film-maker Quentin Tarantino.
-
Australian Horror Movies and the American Market,
single work
criticism
Examines Australian horror films within the broader tradition of Anglophone horror cinema, with a particular focus on the extent to which Australian horror has been tailed to international markets.
- The Terrible Terrace : Australian Gothic Reimagined and the (Inner) Suburban Horror of The Babadook, single work criticism (p. 183-201)
-
American Cartel : Block Bookings and the Paramount Plan,
single work
criticism
Argues that understanding of the Australian film industry requires understanding of how distribution and exhibition networks have shaped production.
-
The Multiplex Era,
single work
criticism
Analyses significant Australian films and their box-office reception in the United States through the structure of the 'multiplex' and its associated distribution networks.
-
'Zest to the jaded movie palate' : Wallace Worsley, Scott R. Dunlap and The Romance of Runnibede,
single work
criticism
Examines The Romance of Runnibede as a case study for concerns about Hollywood's over-arching impact on early Australian (and international) film industries.
-
Defining Neverland : P. J. Hogan, J. M. Barrie and Peter Pan in Post-Mabo Australia,
single work
criticism
Analyses P.J. Hogan's Peter Pan through J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and the film's associations with Australian colonial history in the melancholic presentation of the multi-racial Neverland.
-
Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby : Telling a National Iconic Story Through a Transnational Lens,
single work
criticism
Examines Baz Luhrmann as a 'transnational' film-maker, with a particular focus on The Great Gatsby.