Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Hard Labour : Cecil Holmes’s Captain Thunderbolt (1953)
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'Although born in New Zealand, Cecil Holmes is nevertheless one of the most significant and ambitious filmmakers to work in Australia between the 1950s and the 1970s. A dedicated leftist, in fact a communist, his work consistently demonstrated a humanitarian commitment to the socially disenfranchised, ranging from the underlying capitalist conditions that force decent citizens into bushranging and stealing, to the social, political, cultural and economic conditions confronting Indigenous communities in contemporary Australia. After starting his career with New Zealand’s National Film Unit – where he made the Grierson-like short, The Coaster (1948), and Golden Bay (1949), amongst others – Holmes instigated the first public-service strike in his homeland, and not long after fled to Australia. His initial work in his new country was completed under John Heyer at the Shell Film Unit, hardly the most apt or nurturing environment for a filmmaker of Holmes’s overriding political, social and cultural allegiances. Moving out from under such corporate and governmental patronage was certainly the making of Holmes as a filmmaker, even if he then often struggled to get his subsequent films of the 1950s into the marketplace and onto screens.' (Introduction)

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  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Senses of Cinema A World Without Cinema no. 94 April 2020 20903460 2020 periodical issue

    'In the face of mass death and economic devastation on a worldwide scale, matters of art and entertainment may seem trifling. But the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the cinema. With theatres shuttered, festivals cancelled and film production schedules in disarray, the shutdown mandated across much of the planet has meant that, for the first time since 1895, we are now living in a world without cinema. It is hard, almost impossible, to comprehend.' (Editorial introduction)

    2020
Last amended 21 Dec 2020 09:36:48
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