‘Brutal’ and ‘Grisly ’: Exploring the (non-Indigenous) Critical Reception to Two Australian Postcolonial Films of the Frontier, The Nightingale (2018) and The Proposition (2005) single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 ‘Brutal’ and ‘Grisly ’: Exploring the (non-Indigenous) Critical Reception to Two Australian Postcolonial Films of the Frontier, The Nightingale (2018) and The Proposition (2005)
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    y separately published work icon Studies in Australasian Cinema vol. 14 no. 1 2020 20904158 2020 periodical issue 'The most powerful films are frequently divisive and often stay with you, making an impression that requires a response. After my first viewing of Jennifer Kent's (2019) film The Nightingale, I felt heavy and immobilised. I felt the weight of the film in my body, and at the same time was unsure as to whether to be angry at the violence or to see it as an absolute diegetic necessity; to question the spectacle of both victimhood and agency, or to loudly applaud a different representational perspective of Australian/Tasmanian history, colonial violence, space, gender and indigeneity. In truth, the film invites all of these reactions and more, as evidenced by the contributions featured in this special issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema, guest edited by Michelle Arrow and James Findlay. Multiple threads of temporality, identities, bodies, emotion, language, critique, memory, sound and location are, like the film, interwoven in a series of passionate and provocative responses, from Arrow and Findlay's vital ‘Critical Introduction’ to rigorous articles from Joanne Faulkner, Kristyn Hamer, Catriona Elder, James Findlay, and the inclusion of Rebe Taylor's remarkable conversation with Jim Everett, the film's associate producer and Aboriginal consultant, taken from the symposium ‘The Nightingale: Gender, Race and Troubled Histories on Screen’ held at the University of Technology, Sydney in December 2019.' (Editorial introduction) 2020 pg. 47-62
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