Issue Details: First known date: 2016... 2016 Screen Memories : Film's Knowing and Historical Trauma in The Tracker
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

This paper examines Rolf de Heer’s 2002 film, ‘The Tracker’, in the context of the ‘history war’ debates relating to frontier violence that were rehearsed in the Australian public sphere during the 1990s/2000s. I examine how ‘The Tracker’ challenges the very terms underpinning conventional forms of historiography, wedded to discourses of ‘fact’ and ‘truth’, in the way it investigates what it means to ‘screen’ memory within the context of the politics of the present. Focusing on ‘The Tracker's' self-conscious use of Peter Coad's arresting paintings of frontier violence, I argue that ‘The Tracker’ develops a nuanced engagement with frontier history in the way it highlights the dialectics of ‘revealing’ and ‘concealing’ – rupture and disavowal – at play in the nation’s ‘screening’ of frontier violence.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 16 Feb 2017 13:11:46
306-323 Screen Memories : Film's Knowing and Historical Trauma in The Trackersmall AustLit logo Studies in Australasian Cinema
X