Based on the stage musical of the same name by Jimmy Chi and the band Kuckles, Bran Nue Dae is set in 1969 and follows Willie, a young man who struggles to find a balance between the three things that drive his life: his love for his girl Rosie, his respect for his mother, and his religious faith. Willie's uncomplicated life of fishing and hanging out with his mates and his girl in the idyllic world of Broome is turned upside down when his mother returns him to the religious mission for further schooling and entry into the priesthood. After being punished for an act of youthful rebellion, he runs away from the mission on a journey that leads him to meet his 'Uncle Tadpole' and eventually return to Broome. Along the way, Willie and Uncle Tadpole meet a couple of hippies, spend the night in gaol, and meet a gun-toting roadhouse operator, while managing to stay one step ahead of Father Benedictus, who wants to bring Willie back to the mission.
Set in a suburb of Sydney's North Shore on the night of the 1969 Australian Federal Election, this is a cinematic adaptation of David Williamson's 1971 satire of university-educated, upwardly mobile Australian Labor Party supporters. The gathering is hoping to celebrate the ALP's victory after two decades of conservative government, but as the results are televised throughout the night, this appears increasingly unlikely. The men then devote their energies to drinking and debauching with the younger women, much to the anger of their wives or girlfriends. As the night wears on and hopes fade, there is fighting and much disappointment.
The film's satire (as with the play) achieves its bite through a sense of what passes for naturalism. The essential ockerism of the men becomes more apparent as the party degenerates and the alcohol takes over. The critical focus sharpens and the humour becomes more cynical.
Set in 1965, Flirting is the sequel to The Year My Voice Broke. Danny Embling is now seventeen and a full-time boarder at St Alban's College. Although Danny's stutter and unsportsmanlike physique make him an object of derision to many of his fellow students, his life isn't all bad: he has a perfect view of Circester College, his college's sister school, from his dormitory window. The narrative follows his friendship with Thandiwe Adjewa, the daughter of an African Nationalist on an academic post in Canberra and a student at Circester. Danny and Thandiwe become kindred spirits, lovers, and problems for their teachers, whose methods of maintaining control are long detention sessions and a good thrashing with the cane. The only support they receive is from Nicola Radcliffe, Circhester's head prefect, who is sympathetic to their plight.
'How do you learn to love again when the pain of the past won't let you go? Tracy Heart has set herself the humble goal of owning her own business. The return of her ex-boyfriend Jonny, the criminal aspirations of her brother Ray and the emotional draw of ex-footy star Lionel create friction for Tracy, and her bond of trust with her mother Janelle is tested. A story about families. About lies. And about learning to love again.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 6/8/2013)
Beginning in Australia in the late 1940s, when movie theatres were the only source of audiovisual news coverage, the narrative follows the exploits of Len Maguire and his young sidekick Chris as they cover the big news stories for the Cinetone newsreel company. Len is a doggedly dependable and ever-cautious senior cameraman, trapped in a world of changing values. Len always knows the right thing to do, but becomes troubled as his marriage falters, his job becomes threatened by the arrival of television, and Cinetone is taken over and its work marginalised. Len's loyalties to the Catholic Church, the Labor Party, and his family are juxtaposed against both his brother/rival cameraman Frank--who sells out his values, abandons his responsibilities, and heads off to success in the USA--and his cocky young assistant, Chris.
The first feature film for Phillip Noyce, Newsfront also depicts the increasing changes to the Australian cultural and political landscape, tracing social shifts from the first waves of European post-war immigration through to the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne.
On St Valentine's Day 1900, three schoolgirls and a teacher from an exclusive English-style boarding school go missing at the mysterious Hanging Rock in central Victoria. One of the girls is found alive a week later, but the others are never seen again. As morale within the school begins to disintegrate, the headmistress's increasingly incoherent anger is turned towards one student, leading to tragic consequences. Although the police suspect Michael Fitzhubert, a young English aristocrat, and his manservant Albert, who were in the area at the time the girls disappeared, the mystery is never solved. As Paul Byrnes (Australian Screen) notes, the suggested scenarios range from the 'banal and explicable (a crime of passion) to deeply mystical (a crime of nature).'
[Source: Australian Screen]'Set in the 1880s, [The Proposition] opens in the middle of a frenzied gunfight between the police and a gang of outlaws. Charlie Burns ... and his brother Mikey are captured by Captain Stanley... Together with their psychopathic brother Arthur, ... they are wanted for a brutal crime. Stanley makes Charlie a seemingly impossible proposition in an attempt to bring an end to the cycle of bloody violence.'
Source: Nick Cave's website (http://www.nickcaveandthebadseeds.com/)
Sighted: 20/09/2005
Nineteen-year-old Jimmy finds himself accidentally in debt to local mob boss Pando, after failing to deliver $10,000 to a Bondi woman as promised. Through a series of accidents and with the intervention (often indirect) of Jimmy's dead brother (who acts as a guardian angel throughout the film), Jimmy attempts to work his way out of debt and secure both his own future and that of his love interest, Alex.
Adapted from James Vance Marshall's novel The Children, Walkabout begins with a father-of-two driving his fourteen-year-old daughter and six-year-old son into the desert. Overwhelmed by the pressure on his life, he plans to kill them and then commit suicide, but his plan goes wrong. The siblings wander the desert aimlessly until they meet a young Aboriginal boy who is on a solitary walkabout as part of his tribal initiation into manhood. The three become travelling companions. Gradually, sexual tension develops between the girl and the Aboriginal boy. When they approach white civilisation, the Aboriginal boy dances a night-long courtship dance, but the girl is ignorant of its meaning. When she and her brother awake in the morning, they find the boy dead, hanging from a tree. The brother and sister make their way to the nearby mining town, where they receive a cool welcome from the townsfolk.
'Pete and Jerry are cousins in their early twenties living together on the outskirts of Sydney. Their life consists of dead-end jobs, getting stoned, hanging out at the local pub and talking about girls. Which is fine until Cheryl enters their lives; she's sexy, confident and dangerous. When they both fall in love with her their lives spiral out of control. Dramatic, tense and explosive, WEST explores what happens when you discover how few choices you have in life...'
Source: Screen Australia.
'In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise" an ageing New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.' (From the author's website.)
'It’s the Great Depression. Six-year-old PS is an orphan. He lives in Sydney with his Aunt Lila. But all that is about to change. Now his Aunt Vanessa has decided to take proper care of him.
'Careful, He Might Hear You is one of the most extraordinary portraits of childhood in Australian fiction.' (Publication summary : Text Classics)
'On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water.
'But each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere; each is haunted by past intimacies, secrets and guilt: Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China's Cultural Revolution.
'Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives which chime and resonate, sharing mysterious patterns and symbols. But it is a fifth person, a child, whose presence at the Quay haunts the day and who will overshadow everything that unfolds. By night-time, when Sydney is drenched in a rainstorm, each life has been transformed.' (From the publisher's website.)
''I grew up on the world's largest island.'
'This apparently simple fact is the starting point for Tim Winton's beautiful, evocative and sometimes provocative memoir of how this unique landscape has shaped him and his writing.
'For over thirty years, Winton has written novels in which the natural world is as much a living presence as any character. What is true of his work is also true of his life: from boyhood, his relationship with the world around him – rockpools, seacaves, scrub and swamp – was as vital as any other connection. Camping in hidden inlets of the south-east, walking in the high rocky desert fringe, diving at Ningaloo Reef, bobbing in the sea between sets, Winton has felt the place seep into him, with its rhythms, its dangers, its strange sustenance, and learned to see landscape as a living process.
'Island Home is the story of how that relationship with the Australian landscape came to be, and how it has determined his ideas, his writing and his life. It is also a passionate exhortation for all of us to feel the ground beneath our feet. Much more powerfully than a political idea, or an economy, Australia is a physical entity. Where we are defines who we are, in ways we too often forget to our detriment, and the country's.
'Wise, rhapsodic, exalted – Island Home is not just a brilliant, moving insight into the life and art of one of our finest writers, but a compelling investigation into the way our country makes us who we are.' (Publication summary)
'Who else, but a writer, is really able to interrogate the work of other writers?
'From Christina Stead, Les Murray and Patrick White to Proust, Shakespeare and Charlotte Bronte, David Malouf reads and examines the work of writers who have challenged, inspired and entertained us for generations. He also explores his own work and the life of the writer, where the ever-present danger is spending too much time talking about writing and not enough doing it.
'These alternative views of some of our best-loved writers and readers will send us scurrying back to read Jane Eyre, Kipling and of course, David Malouf.' (Publication summary)
'An authoritative survey of Australian Aboriginal writing over two centuries, across a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. Including some of the most distinctive writing produced in Australia, it offers rich insights into Aboriginal culture and experience...
'The anthology includes journalism, petitions and political letters from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as major works that reflect the blossoming of Aboriginal poetry, prose and drama from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Literature has been used as a powerful political tool by Aboriginal people in a political system which renders them largely voiceless. These works chronicle the ongoing suffering of dispossession, but also the resilience of Aboriginal people across the country, and the hope and joy in their lives.' (Publisher's blurb)
'A verse novel that centres around the impact of colonisation in mid-north South Australia around 1880. Ruby, refugee of a massacre, shelters in the woods where she befriends an Irishman trapper. The poems convey how fear of discovery is overcome by the need for human contact, which, in a tense unravelling of events, is forcibly challenged by an Aboriginal lawman. The natural world is richly observed and Ruby’s courtship is measured by the turning of the seasons.'
Source: Magabala Books.
'Parang is the second collection of poetry from former Australian Poetry Slam winner Omar Musa. Written over four years, the collection explores Malaysian jungles, dark Australian streets, and dreams. Dealing with the issues of loss, migration and belonging, Parang is an incisive and sometimes raw look at the here and now of a changing world.' (Publication summary)
Based on the stage musical of the same name by Jimmy Chi and the band Kuckles, Bran Nue Dae is set in 1969 and follows Willie, a young man who struggles to find a balance between the three things that drive his life: his love for his girl Rosie, his respect for his mother, and his religious faith. Willie's uncomplicated life of fishing and hanging out with his mates and his girl in the idyllic world of Broome is turned upside down when his mother returns him to the religious mission for further schooling and entry into the priesthood. After being punished for an act of youthful rebellion, he runs away from the mission on a journey that leads him to meet his 'Uncle Tadpole' and eventually return to Broome. Along the way, Willie and Uncle Tadpole meet a couple of hippies, spend the night in gaol, and meet a gun-toting roadhouse operator, while managing to stay one step ahead of Father Benedictus, who wants to bring Willie back to the mission.
Set in a suburb of Sydney's North Shore on the night of the 1969 Australian Federal Election, this is a cinematic adaptation of David Williamson's 1971 satire of university-educated, upwardly mobile Australian Labor Party supporters. The gathering is hoping to celebrate the ALP's victory after two decades of conservative government, but as the results are televised throughout the night, this appears increasingly unlikely. The men then devote their energies to drinking and debauching with the younger women, much to the anger of their wives or girlfriends. As the night wears on and hopes fade, there is fighting and much disappointment.
The film's satire (as with the play) achieves its bite through a sense of what passes for naturalism. The essential ockerism of the men becomes more apparent as the party degenerates and the alcohol takes over. The critical focus sharpens and the humour becomes more cynical.
Set in 1965, Flirting is the sequel to The Year My Voice Broke. Danny Embling is now seventeen and a full-time boarder at St Alban's College. Although Danny's stutter and unsportsmanlike physique make him an object of derision to many of his fellow students, his life isn't all bad: he has a perfect view of Circester College, his college's sister school, from his dormitory window. The narrative follows his friendship with Thandiwe Adjewa, the daughter of an African Nationalist on an academic post in Canberra and a student at Circester. Danny and Thandiwe become kindred spirits, lovers, and problems for their teachers, whose methods of maintaining control are long detention sessions and a good thrashing with the cane. The only support they receive is from Nicola Radcliffe, Circhester's head prefect, who is sympathetic to their plight.
'How do you learn to love again when the pain of the past won't let you go? Tracy Heart has set herself the humble goal of owning her own business. The return of her ex-boyfriend Jonny, the criminal aspirations of her brother Ray and the emotional draw of ex-footy star Lionel create friction for Tracy, and her bond of trust with her mother Janelle is tested. A story about families. About lies. And about learning to love again.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 6/8/2013)
Beginning in Australia in the late 1940s, when movie theatres were the only source of audiovisual news coverage, the narrative follows the exploits of Len Maguire and his young sidekick Chris as they cover the big news stories for the Cinetone newsreel company. Len is a doggedly dependable and ever-cautious senior cameraman, trapped in a world of changing values. Len always knows the right thing to do, but becomes troubled as his marriage falters, his job becomes threatened by the arrival of television, and Cinetone is taken over and its work marginalised. Len's loyalties to the Catholic Church, the Labor Party, and his family are juxtaposed against both his brother/rival cameraman Frank--who sells out his values, abandons his responsibilities, and heads off to success in the USA--and his cocky young assistant, Chris.
The first feature film for Phillip Noyce, Newsfront also depicts the increasing changes to the Australian cultural and political landscape, tracing social shifts from the first waves of European post-war immigration through to the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne.
Not Quite Hollywood is the story of Ozploitation.
More explicit, violent and energetic than anything out of Hollywood, Aussie genre movies such as Alvin Purple, The Man From Hong Kong, Patrick, Mad Max and Turkey Shoot presented a unique take on established cinematic conventions.
In England, Italy and the grindhouses and Drive-ins of North America, audiences applauded our homegrown marauding revheads with their brutish cars; our sprnky well-stacked heroines and our stunts - unparalleled in their quality and extreme danger!
Busting with outrageous anecdotes, trivia and graphic poster art - and including isights from key cast, crew and fans - including Quentin Tarantino - this is the wild, untold story of an era when Aussie cinema got its gear off and showed the world a full-frontal explosion of boobs, pubes, tubes...and even a little kung fu!
On St Valentine's Day 1900, three schoolgirls and a teacher from an exclusive English-style boarding school go missing at the mysterious Hanging Rock in central Victoria. One of the girls is found alive a week later, but the others are never seen again. As morale within the school begins to disintegrate, the headmistress's increasingly incoherent anger is turned towards one student, leading to tragic consequences. Although the police suspect Michael Fitzhubert, a young English aristocrat, and his manservant Albert, who were in the area at the time the girls disappeared, the mystery is never solved. As Paul Byrnes (Australian Screen) notes, the suggested scenarios range from the 'banal and explicable (a crime of passion) to deeply mystical (a crime of nature).'
[Source: Australian Screen]'Set in the 1880s, [The Proposition] opens in the middle of a frenzied gunfight between the police and a gang of outlaws. Charlie Burns ... and his brother Mikey are captured by Captain Stanley... Together with their psychopathic brother Arthur, ... they are wanted for a brutal crime. Stanley makes Charlie a seemingly impossible proposition in an attempt to bring an end to the cycle of bloody violence.'
Source: Nick Cave's website (http://www.nickcaveandthebadseeds.com/)
Sighted: 20/09/2005
Nineteen-year-old Jimmy finds himself accidentally in debt to local mob boss Pando, after failing to deliver $10,000 to a Bondi woman as promised. Through a series of accidents and with the intervention (often indirect) of Jimmy's dead brother (who acts as a guardian angel throughout the film), Jimmy attempts to work his way out of debt and secure both his own future and that of his love interest, Alex.
Adapted from James Vance Marshall's novel The Children, Walkabout begins with a father-of-two driving his fourteen-year-old daughter and six-year-old son into the desert. Overwhelmed by the pressure on his life, he plans to kill them and then commit suicide, but his plan goes wrong. The siblings wander the desert aimlessly until they meet a young Aboriginal boy who is on a solitary walkabout as part of his tribal initiation into manhood. The three become travelling companions. Gradually, sexual tension develops between the girl and the Aboriginal boy. When they approach white civilisation, the Aboriginal boy dances a night-long courtship dance, but the girl is ignorant of its meaning. When she and her brother awake in the morning, they find the boy dead, hanging from a tree. The brother and sister make their way to the nearby mining town, where they receive a cool welcome from the townsfolk.
'Pete and Jerry are cousins in their early twenties living together on the outskirts of Sydney. Their life consists of dead-end jobs, getting stoned, hanging out at the local pub and talking about girls. Which is fine until Cheryl enters their lives; she's sexy, confident and dangerous. When they both fall in love with her their lives spiral out of control. Dramatic, tense and explosive, WEST explores what happens when you discover how few choices you have in life...'
Source: Screen Australia.
'The book is specifically designed for tertiary level students studying creative writing, though it can be used by the more general reader. It takes an experimental approach, stresses incremental strategies and uses literary and cultural theory to illuminate the process of writing. It includes many different types of writing, including fiction, poetry, mixed genre writing, writing for performance and writing for new media. Each chapter is illustrated with extensive student and published examples.'
(Source: information provided by Hazel Smith.)
'An authoritative survey of Australian Aboriginal writing over two centuries, across a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. Including some of the most distinctive writing produced in Australia, it offers rich insights into Aboriginal culture and experience...
'The anthology includes journalism, petitions and political letters from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as major works that reflect the blossoming of Aboriginal poetry, prose and drama from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Literature has been used as a powerful political tool by Aboriginal people in a political system which renders them largely voiceless. These works chronicle the ongoing suffering of dispossession, but also the resilience of Aboriginal people across the country, and the hope and joy in their lives.' (Publisher's blurb)
Swallow the Air follows the life of 15-year-old May Gibson, an Aboriginal girl from New South Wales whose mother commits suicide. May and her brother go to live with their aunt, but eventually May travels further afield, first to Redfern's Block in Sydney, then to the Northern Territory, and finally into central New South Wales. She travels to escape, but also in pursuit of a sense of her own history, family, and identity.
'Parang is the second collection of poetry from former Australian Poetry Slam winner Omar Musa. Written over four years, the collection explores Malaysian jungles, dark Australian streets, and dreams. Dealing with the issues of loss, migration and belonging, Parang is an incisive and sometimes raw look at the here and now of a changing world.' (Publication summary)
Set in inner suburban 1970s Melbourne, Monkey Grip describes the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are living and loving in new ways. Single parent Nora falls in love with Javo, a heroin addict, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made.
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'In 1806 William Thornhill, a man of quick temper and deep feelings, is transported from the slums of London to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and their children he arrives in a harsh land he cannot understand.
'But the colony can turn a convict into a free man. Eight years later Thornhill sails up the Hawkesbury to claim a hundred acres for himself.
'Aboriginal people already live on that river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them.
'Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, soon has to make the most difficult choice of his life.
'Inspired by research into her own family history, Kate Grenville vividly creates the reality of settler life, its longings, dangers and dilemmas. The Secret River is a brilliantly written book, a groundbreaking story about identity, belonging and ownership.' (From the publisher's website.)
'''Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
'Tolstoy wasn't thinking specifically of the Harrison family when he wrote those words, but maybe he should have been. George Harrison is twenty-eight and afraid of the dark. His father is dead and his mother lives in la-la land. Reeling from a broken heart, and still coping with the trauma of a childhood home invasion, George works in a dead-end job in a bowling alley and finds rare solace in the giant painting of an alien that sits outside his room. His brother Matthew isn't much better off. After losing the love of his life in a traumatic car accident, he's retreated into a private world of sleep where he dreams about falling in love with comedienne Magda Szubanski.
'Matthew and George are each stuck in their own little messed-up world, with no idea how to get out, and neither of them is sure whether their unhappy family will ever finally pull together, or simply just fall apart.' (Publisher's blurb)
Swallow the Air follows the life of 15-year-old May Gibson, an Aboriginal girl from New South Wales whose mother commits suicide. May and her brother go to live with their aunt, but eventually May travels further afield, first to Redfern's Block in Sydney, then to the Northern Territory, and finally into central New South Wales. She travels to escape, but also in pursuit of a sense of her own history, family, and identity.
'At once a non-fiction thriller and a moral maze, this is one man's epic story of trying to find a safe place in the world.
'When Ali Al Jenabi flees Saddam Hussein's torture chambers, he is forced to leave his family behind in Iraq. What follows is an incredible international odyssey through the shadow world of fake passports, crowded camps and illegal border crossings, living every day with excruciating uncertainty about what the next will bring.
'Through betrayal, triumph, misfortune - even romance and heartbreak - Ali is sustained by his fierce love of freedom and family. Continually pushed to the limits of his endurance, eventually he must confront what he has been forced to become.
'With enormous power and insight, The People Smuggler tells a story of daily heroism, bringing to life the forces that drive so many people to put their lives in unscrupulous hands. It is an utterly gripping portrait of a man cut loose from the protections of civilisation, attempting to retain his dignity and humanity while taking whatever path he can out of an impossible position.' (From the publisher's website.)
Set in inner suburban 1970s Melbourne, Monkey Grip describes the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are living and loving in new ways. Single parent Nora falls in love with Javo, a heroin addict, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made.
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'In 1806 William Thornhill, a man of quick temper and deep feelings, is transported from the slums of London to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and their children he arrives in a harsh land he cannot understand.
'But the colony can turn a convict into a free man. Eight years later Thornhill sails up the Hawkesbury to claim a hundred acres for himself.
'Aboriginal people already live on that river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them.
'Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, soon has to make the most difficult choice of his life.
'Inspired by research into her own family history, Kate Grenville vividly creates the reality of settler life, its longings, dangers and dilemmas. The Secret River is a brilliantly written book, a groundbreaking story about identity, belonging and ownership.' (From the publisher's website.)
'''Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
'Tolstoy wasn't thinking specifically of the Harrison family when he wrote those words, but maybe he should have been. George Harrison is twenty-eight and afraid of the dark. His father is dead and his mother lives in la-la land. Reeling from a broken heart, and still coping with the trauma of a childhood home invasion, George works in a dead-end job in a bowling alley and finds rare solace in the giant painting of an alien that sits outside his room. His brother Matthew isn't much better off. After losing the love of his life in a traumatic car accident, he's retreated into a private world of sleep where he dreams about falling in love with comedienne Magda Szubanski.
'Matthew and George are each stuck in their own little messed-up world, with no idea how to get out, and neither of them is sure whether their unhappy family will ever finally pull together, or simply just fall apart.' (Publisher's blurb)
Swallow the Air follows the life of 15-year-old May Gibson, an Aboriginal girl from New South Wales whose mother commits suicide. May and her brother go to live with their aunt, but eventually May travels further afield, first to Redfern's Block in Sydney, then to the Northern Territory, and finally into central New South Wales. She travels to escape, but also in pursuit of a sense of her own history, family, and identity.
'In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise" an ageing New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.' (From the author's website.)
'In 1806 William Thornhill, a man of quick temper and deep feelings, is transported from the slums of London to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and their children he arrives in a harsh land he cannot understand.
'But the colony can turn a convict into a free man. Eight years later Thornhill sails up the Hawkesbury to claim a hundred acres for himself.
'Aboriginal people already live on that river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them.
'Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, soon has to make the most difficult choice of his life.
'Inspired by research into her own family history, Kate Grenville vividly creates the reality of settler life, its longings, dangers and dilemmas. The Secret River is a brilliantly written book, a groundbreaking story about identity, belonging and ownership.' (From the publisher's website.)
This sequel to the enormously popular film The Adventures of Barry McKenzie begins where the other ended. While Barry McKenzie and his aunt Dame Edna are flying home to Australia from England, two henchmen of Count von Plasma (a Dracula-type ruler of an isolated and unnamed Eastern European state) mistake Dame Edna for the Queen of the United Kingdom. They kidnap her during a brief stopover in Paris, believing that she will draw tourists to their country. Barry and his mates subsequently mount a rescue.
'In the gem fields of central Queensland, knockabout young miners Mike and Johnny (Colin Friels and Harry Hopkins) borrow heavily to take on a claim-jumping newcomer (Dennis Miller) who has money and muscle. Help arrives from an unlikely source – a city doctor (Norman Kaye) and his family, passing though on holiday, and a lonely pilot (Simon Chilvers), who sells them a plane. They band together against the enemy, but Mike and Johnny argue over strategy and the doctor’s adventurous daughter (Lisa Peers).'
Source: Australian Screen.
Continuum began as a joint initiative between Tom O'Regan at Murdoch University and Brian Shoesmith at Edith Cowan University, Perth. From 1991-5 it was wholly located in the Centre for Research in Culture and Communication at Murdoch University. From mid-1995 it was located in the Department of Media Studies at Edith Cowan University.
Continuum is a thematically based cultural studies journal. The primary focus of the journal is upon screen media, but it also includes publishing, broadcasting and public exhibitionary media such as museums and sites. Journal editors are particularly interested in (1) the history and practice of screen media in Australasia and Asia ; (2) the connections between such media (particularly between film, TV, publishing, visual arts and exhibitionary sites). Each issue is devoted to the exploration of a particular cultural site. Sites have included Indigenous media, television, Asian cinema, media discourse, film style, publishing, photography, radio, 'Screening Cultural Studies', electronic arts in Australia and 'Critical Multiculturalism'. The journal is committed to articulating the energies, fragmentations, and loose coalitions that attend such cultural sites.
(Source : Continuum)
Mick 'Crocodile' Dundee runs an outback adventure business with his trusted friend and self-proclaimed mentor Walter Reilly. When he survives a crocodile attack, the news travels well beyond the Northern Territory, and a glamorous New York journalist, Sue Charlton, arrives to interview him. He invites her to come with him to the place where he was attacked. When Sue herself is attacked by a croc, Mick saves her. This leads to an invitation for Mick to visit his first ever city: New York City. Mick finds the culture and life in New York City a lot different than his home.
In the early 1900s, the spirited and talented Laura Tweedle Ramsbotham arrives at an exclusive Melbourne ladies' college, only to be greeted with jeers and treated as a country bumpkin. Although she is defiant towards her peers, the pressure almost defeats her. She soon learns, however, to be as ruthless as the other girls. Caught out after inventing an illicit liaison with the handsome new minister, she becomes a pariah until she is taken under the wing of an older girl, the elegant and kindly Evelyn Suitor. Laura subsequently falls in love with Evelyn, causing the latter to leave the school in order to escape Laura's attentions. Laura eventually completes her schooling, winning a two-year music scholarship to study piano.
Source: Australian Screen.
'Couched in terms more suited to a sensationalist TV movie, this Australian production unashamedly employs melodramatic symbolism to emphasise the unbelievable truth of its true-life subject. Director Frank Shields secures a full-throttle performance from Ralph Schicha, as the brutal husband who not only subjects wife Kerry Mack to endless domestic violence, but also forces her to participate in the bank raids that sustain his neo-Nazi activities. Although there are references to the Baader-Meinhof group, ultimately the film is clearly less interested in politics than in the tempestuous marriage.'
Source: Radio Times (http://www.radiotimes.com/film/kbbdx/URL). (Sighted: 17/6/2013)
'Sandy, a geologist, finds herself stuck on a field trip to the Pilbara desert with a Japanese man she finds inscrutable, annoying and decidedly arrogant. Hiromitsu's view of her is not much better. Things go from bad to worse when they become stranded in one of the most remote regions on earth. JAPANESE STORY is a journey of change and discovery for its two lead characters.'
Source: Screen Australia.
'On a lonely cattle station in the Northern Territory, a newly born Aboriginal baby is adopted by a white woman in place of her own child who has died. The child is raised as a white child and forbidden any contact with the Aborigines on the station. Years later, Jedda is drawn by the mysteries of the Aboriginal people but restrained by her upbringing. Eventually she is fascinated by a full-blood Aboriginal, Marbuck, who arrives at the station seeking work and is drawn to his campfire by his song. He takes her away as his captive and returns to his tribal lands, but he is rejected by his tribe for having broken their marriage taboos. Pursued by the men from Jedda's station and haunted by the death wish of his own tribe, Marbuck is driven insane and finally falls, with Jedda, over a cliff.'
(Synopsis from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School website, http://library.aftrs.edu.au)
'A woman disappears. Four marriages are drawn into a tangled web of love, deceit, sex and death. Not all of them survive. LANTANA is a psychological thriller about love. It's about the mistakes we make, the consequences we suffer, and the attempts we make to fix things up.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 4/12/2013)
'How do you learn to love again when the pain of the past won't let you go? Tracy Heart has set herself the humble goal of owning her own business. The return of her ex-boyfriend Jonny, the criminal aspirations of her brother Ray and the emotional draw of ex-footy star Lionel create friction for Tracy, and her bond of trust with her mother Janelle is tested. A story about families. About lies. And about learning to love again.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 6/8/2013)
'Nonna Katia, Christina and Josie are three generations of Italian-Australian women living together in a hothouse atmosphere of love, support...and drama on an operatic scale.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 23/10/2012)
In this sequel to the original Mad Max, Max finds himself involved with a small group of settlers who live around a small working oil refinery, producing that most precious of products in a post-apocalyptic society: petrol.
A dark portrait of barely sympathetic, disaffected youth, Metal Skin tells the story of four social misfits whose greatest thrill is putting the pedal to the metal and drag racing their problems into oblivion. Against this background of fast cars and empty lives, the four develop a strange and complex relationship. Central to the narrative are Psycho Joe, a petrol-head with limited social skills who lives with his mentally ill father, and the womanising Dazey, whose girlfriend suffers physically and mentally for his hobby. Joe and Dazey first meet at the local supermarket where Joe has just been employed after years of unemployment. Into the mix comes Savina, a Satan-worshipping witch. While interested in Dazey, even though he is 'taken,' Savina finds herself having to fend off Joe's hopeless advances. The nihilism of these young characters, coupled with parental disputes, leads to various tragedies.
Some reviews of Metal Skin suggest that it draws on the tropes of Arthurian legends, linking the film's title to a quotation from John Boorman's 1981 Excalibur.
On St Valentine's Day 1900, three schoolgirls and a teacher from an exclusive English-style boarding school go missing at the mysterious Hanging Rock in central Victoria. One of the girls is found alive a week later, but the others are never seen again. As morale within the school begins to disintegrate, the headmistress's increasingly incoherent anger is turned towards one student, leading to tragic consequences. Although the police suspect Michael Fitzhubert, a young English aristocrat, and his manservant Albert, who were in the area at the time the girls disappeared, the mystery is never solved. As Paul Byrnes (Australian Screen) notes, the suggested scenarios range from the 'banal and explicable (a crime of passion) to deeply mystical (a crime of nature).'
[Source: Australian Screen]'Prime Mover is a diesel-charged love story about ambition, pressure, responsibility and the love shared by a man, a woman and his truck.'
Source: Porchlight Films website, http://www.porchlightfilms.com.au
Sighted: 19/08/2008
A vicious razorback boar terrorises the Australian outback, beginning with the death of a small child, whose grandfather is tried for his murder but acquitted. An American journalist (who holds strong conservationist views) follows the story and is attacked by two locals, who leave her for the boar to kill. Her husband then comes to Australia, determined to seek the boar who killed his wife (and, incidentally, revenge himself on the two locals).
Written by prolific screen-writer Everett De Roche, the film is based on a novel of the same name by American novelist Peter Brennan (a novel that, apparently, bears little resemblance to the film). The first full-length film directed by Russell Mulcahy, Razorback is a bridge between Mulcahy's early work on video clips and his later, more recognisable genre films, beginning (only two years after Razorback) with Highlander.
According to David Carroll at Tabula Rasa, 'Razorback is perhaps the most recognisable 'horror' film from
Australia. It has a rising young director in the form of Russell
Mulcahy, some reasonably well-known faces, both Australian and American,
and a giant pig. It also has a depiction of the Australian outback as,
basically, hell'.
Carroll specifies of the way in which the film approaches Australia (as a concept, rather than simply a country) that 'The brothers, their factory, the nightmare landscape and the pig itself, are all presented as a single, coherent malevolence. I have written previously, in more than one place, that the landscape is the defining feature of Australian horror. Razorback extends the idea into expressionism'. He emphasises that 'Of course, all this unnaturalistic splendour could just be attributed to shoddy film-making, but I don't think so. The change in tone and the way things are shot in different locations, such as Sarah's farm and the factory, is very striking, whilst the town itself shifts between the two. There seem to be two different realities, and a slippery border between them.'
Source: Tabula Rasa (http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusHorror/Razorback.html). (Sighted: 15/6/2012)
'Samson and Delilah tells the story of two Aboriginal teenagers in a remote community. They live in a sparse environment but one that absorbs all manner of cultural influences, where dot painting and country music exist side by side. Samson gets through his days by sniffing, while Delilah is the caregiver for her nana before taking a moment for herself to listen to Latino music. Their journey ranges across many of the most urgent issues concerning Indigenous people in Australia, homelessness, poverty, domestic violence and substance abuse, but it does so with tenderness, dignity, and even humour.'
Source: Adelaide Film Festival website, www.adelaidefilmfestival.org/ Sighted: 23/02/2009
In the vein of stranger-comes-to-town westerns, lawyer Asta Cadell (Deborah Lee Furness) is forced to stop in the small country town of Ginaborak to await parts for her motorcycle. The men of the town act very aggressively. The women cower. Asta is offered a place to stay by Tim Curtis (Tony Barry) a local mechanic and learns of the rape of his daughter Lizze (Simone Buchanan) the previous evening. As Asta befriends Lizze, she is horrified to discover that the men repeatedly gang rape the women of Ginborak.
Source: Reading Room, 'Shame', http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/film/dbase/2003/shame.htm (Sighted 7/10/11)
Shine is the true story of David Helfgott, a brilliant pianist whose musical gift is nearly compromised by the emotional strain of his personal life. A child prodigy whose interpretive genius promised a brilliant career as a concert pianist, David grew up under the tyrannical parenting of his father. Their turbulent relationship almost destroys David's promise and threatens his fragile mental balance. When an unlikely romance with a remarkable woman brings stability to David's chaotic world, he returns to concert performance in triumph. Freed from the difficult legacy of his father's influence, his musical talent prevails.
(Source: Libraries Australia)
A light-hearted look at the politics and intrigue of competitive ballroom dancing, the storyline focuses on Scott Hastings, who, his ambitious mother Shirley believes, will become champion with his current partner Liz. When Scott tries to introduce his own steps into their routine (against Pan-Pacific Championship rules), Liz leaves him for a rival partner. Without a partner, Scott eventually agrees to dance with Fran, a shy student at the academy run by his mother. When he meets her father and grandmother, Scott leans how to put passion into his movements, especially through the paso doble. In a last ditch effort to see her son become the Pan-Pacific Champion, Shirley convinces him to partner Tina Sparkle, which he reluctantly does. When he finally realises what he has done, he implores Fran to partner him. When they are disqualified from the competition, the audience (led by Scott's father, Barry) gives them a standing ovation and Scott and Fran go on to perform their version of the paso doble.
[Source: Australian Screen]
Film adaptation of Anthony Fingleton's autobiography.
Italian sports journalist Nino Culotta is lured to Sydney during the mid-1960s to work for his brother's new magazine for migrant Italians. When he arrives in the country, however, Nino finds out that there is no magazine and that his brother has taken off with the investors' cash. Left in the lurch is his brother's business partner, Kay Kelly. Nino vows to pay off his brother's debt and gets a job as a builder's labourer. In doing so, he learns how to talk, act, and drink like an Australian male. His numerous attempts to woo Kay are repeatedly rebuffed with humorous results, but in the end she falls in love with him. Nino's introduction to the country and its culture finds him bemused but ultimately confident that he has a future here.
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image suggests this film is 'very much a product of the assimilationist view dominating Australian immigration policy at the time'.
Nineteen-year-old Jimmy finds himself accidentally in debt to local mob boss Pando, after failing to deliver $10,000 to a Bondi woman as promised. Through a series of accidents and with the intervention (often indirect) of Jimmy's dead brother (who acts as a guardian angel throughout the film), Jimmy attempts to work his way out of debt and secure both his own future and that of his love interest, Alex.
'Pete and Jerry are cousins in their early twenties living together on the outskirts of Sydney. Their life consists of dead-end jobs, getting stoned, hanging out at the local pub and talking about girls. Which is fine until Cheryl enters their lives; she's sexy, confident and dangerous. When they both fall in love with her their lives spiral out of control. Dramatic, tense and explosive, WEST explores what happens when you discover how few choices you have in life...'
Source: Screen Australia.
Inspired in part by some unsolved murders in the Australian outback, and by the gruesome backpacker murders committed by Ivan Milat in NSW during the late 1980s/early 1990s, Wolf Creek tells the story of three young backpackers, Ben Mitchell, an Australian, and Liz Hunter and Kristy Earl, both English. Although the girls don't know Ben all that well, he and Liz fancy each other. After buying a car in Broome, situated in the far north coast of Western Australia, the trio head east with the intention of driving across the top end to Cairns (Queensland). At the end of their first day in the desert, their car breaks down at a deserted tourist site - the large crater of a meteorite. Later that night a truck arrives, driven by a real outback character, Mick Taylor. He tows them to his isolated camp at an abandoned mine site, promising to fix their car. All three tourists fall asleep after Mick drugs them. When Liz wakes up, she is bound and gagged and her friends are missing and the nightmare begins.
'Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself.
'One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast...' (From the publisher's website.)
'''Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
'Tolstoy wasn't thinking specifically of the Harrison family when he wrote those words, but maybe he should have been. George Harrison is twenty-eight and afraid of the dark. His father is dead and his mother lives in la-la land. Reeling from a broken heart, and still coping with the trauma of a childhood home invasion, George works in a dead-end job in a bowling alley and finds rare solace in the giant painting of an alien that sits outside his room. His brother Matthew isn't much better off. After losing the love of his life in a traumatic car accident, he's retreated into a private world of sleep where he dreams about falling in love with comedienne Magda Szubanski.
'Matthew and George are each stuck in their own little messed-up world, with no idea how to get out, and neither of them is sure whether their unhappy family will ever finally pull together, or simply just fall apart.' (Publisher's blurb)
Swallow the Air follows the life of 15-year-old May Gibson, an Aboriginal girl from New South Wales whose mother commits suicide. May and her brother go to live with their aunt, but eventually May travels further afield, first to Redfern's Block in Sydney, then to the Northern Territory, and finally into central New South Wales. She travels to escape, but also in pursuit of a sense of her own history, family, and identity.
An initiative of the Indigenous Branch of the Australian Film Commission (AFC), From Sand to Celluloid comprises six films that have been packaged and distributed by Australian Film Institute Distribution (AFID) and Film Australia. The initial conception for the series came from the Indigenous Drama Initiative, set in 1994 with the express intention of advancing the development and production of films created by Indigenous Australians and increasing their participation in all areas of the film and television industry. The first project initiated was the development and production of six ten-minute dramas for television. Expressions of interest were called for from Indigenous Australians nationally. The ten applicants chosen (from forty seven) attended a visual storytelling workshop held in Melbourne in 1995. The Initiative utilised the assistance of all the state film assistance agencies and a pre-sale from SBS with an agreement to broadcast on SBS in July 1996, as well as the full participation of Film Australia through its funding of one of the productions. Five projects were further selected to go into production, along with Sally Riley's film Fly Peewee Fly (produced by Film Australia), and were delivered to the AFC on 30 March, 1996. Indigenous Australians were employed in both cast and crew positions.
In order to encourage a wider recognition and appreciation of the work of Indigenous Australians, the AFC supported the national distribution and exhibition of the films through the Australian Film Institute Distribution (AFID). AFID distributed the films as a package under the title of From Sand to Celluloid and the films screened at twenty-four locations, from as far afield as Cooper Pedy in South Australia to Broome in Western Australia, and were attended by a total of approximately 7,200 people.
As a unified collection, the films offer more than a two-dimensional victim-oppressor approach. They challenge viewers at all levels: as fellow citizens, as parents, as observers, and as fellow members of Indigenous communities. From Sand to Celluloid challenges viewers with many uncomfortable aspects of Australia's too-recent history. These include the active discrimination practised against Indigenous people in public places such as swimming pools and cinemas in country towns around Australia and the 'stolen generation': children taken away without their parents' consent and placed into homes or in white foster homes, with devastating effect on them and their families. The series is an essential resource for Indigenous studies, Australian history film studies, English legal studies, human relationship courses, and social studies.
[Source: Australian Film Commission, http://www.afc.gov.au/archive/annrep/ar95_96/indig.html]
'This is the true story of Rose, a glamorous Shanghai nightclub singer, who struggles to survive in '70s Australia with two young children. Based on writer/director Tony Ayres' own life, The Home Song Stories is an epic tale of mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, unrequited love, secrets and betrayal.'
Source: Australian Film Commission. (Sighted: 8/10/2014)
'It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of the secluded volcanic outcropping. Farther, higher, until at last they disappeared. They never returned. ...'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Penguin Random House, 2014).
'For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life.' (From the author's website.)
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself.
'One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast...' (From the publisher's website.)
'''Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
'Tolstoy wasn't thinking specifically of the Harrison family when he wrote those words, but maybe he should have been. George Harrison is twenty-eight and afraid of the dark. His father is dead and his mother lives in la-la land. Reeling from a broken heart, and still coping with the trauma of a childhood home invasion, George works in a dead-end job in a bowling alley and finds rare solace in the giant painting of an alien that sits outside his room. His brother Matthew isn't much better off. After losing the love of his life in a traumatic car accident, he's retreated into a private world of sleep where he dreams about falling in love with comedienne Magda Szubanski.
'Matthew and George are each stuck in their own little messed-up world, with no idea how to get out, and neither of them is sure whether their unhappy family will ever finally pull together, or simply just fall apart.' (Publisher's blurb)
Swallow the Air follows the life of 15-year-old May Gibson, an Aboriginal girl from New South Wales whose mother commits suicide. May and her brother go to live with their aunt, but eventually May travels further afield, first to Redfern's Block in Sydney, then to the Northern Territory, and finally into central New South Wales. She travels to escape, but also in pursuit of a sense of her own history, family, and identity.
'Liza used to say that she saw her past life as a string of roughly-graded balls, and so did Hilda have a linear conception of hers, thinking of it as a track with detours. But for some years now I have likened mine to a globe suspended in my head, and ever since the shocking realisation that waste is irretrievalbe, I have been careful not to let this globe spin to expose the nether side on which my marriage has left its multitude of images.
'Nora Porteous has spent most of her life waiting to escape. Fleeing from her small-town family and then from her stifling marriage to a mean-spirited husband, Nora arrives finally in London where she creates a new life for herself as a successful dressmaker.
'Now in her seventies, Nora returns to Queensland to settle into her childhood home.
'But Nora has been away a long time, and the people and events of her past are not at all like she remembered them. And while some things never change, Nora is about to discover just how selective her 'globe of memory' has been.
'Tirra Lirra by the River is a moving account of one woman's remarkable life, a beautifully written novel which displays the lyrical brevity of Jessica Anderson's award-winning style.' (Publication summary)
'Liza used to say that she saw her past life as a string of roughly-graded balls, and so did Hilda have a linear conception of hers, thinking of it as a track with detours. But for some years now I have likened mine to a globe suspended in my head, and ever since the shocking realisation that waste is irretrievalbe, I have been careful not to let this globe spin to expose the nether side on which my marriage has left its multitude of images.
'Nora Porteous has spent most of her life waiting to escape. Fleeing from her small-town family and then from her stifling marriage to a mean-spirited husband, Nora arrives finally in London where she creates a new life for herself as a successful dressmaker.
'Now in her seventies, Nora returns to Queensland to settle into her childhood home.
'But Nora has been away a long time, and the people and events of her past are not at all like she remembered them. And while some things never change, Nora is about to discover just how selective her 'globe of memory' has been.
'Tirra Lirra by the River is a moving account of one woman's remarkable life, a beautifully written novel which displays the lyrical brevity of Jessica Anderson's award-winning style.' (Publication summary)
'For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life.' (From the author's website.)
'My Brilliant Career was written by Stella Franklin (1879-1954) when she was just nineteen years old. The novel struggled to find an Australian publisher, but was published in London and Edinburgh in 1901 after receiving an endorsement from Henry Lawson. Although Franklin wrote under the pseudonym 'Miles Franklin', Lawson’s preface makes it clear that Franklin is, as Lawson puts it 'a girl.'
'The novel relates the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a strong-willed young woman of the 1890s growing up in the Goulburn area of New South Wales and longing to be a writer.' (Publication summary)
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Through the crumbling ruins of the once splendid Xanadu, Miss Hare wanders, half-mad. In the wilderness she stumbles upon an Aboriginal artist and a Jewish refugee. They place themselves in the care of a local washerwoman. In a world of pervasive evil, all four have been independently damaged and discarded. Now in one shared vision they find themselves bound together, understanding the possibility of redemption.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage ed.).
This sequel to the enormously popular film The Adventures of Barry McKenzie begins where the other ended. While Barry McKenzie and his aunt Dame Edna are flying home to Australia from England, two henchmen of Count von Plasma (a Dracula-type ruler of an isolated and unnamed Eastern European state) mistake Dame Edna for the Queen of the United Kingdom. They kidnap her during a brief stopover in Paris, believing that she will draw tourists to their country. Barry and his mates subsequently mount a rescue.
'In the gem fields of central Queensland, knockabout young miners Mike and Johnny (Colin Friels and Harry Hopkins) borrow heavily to take on a claim-jumping newcomer (Dennis Miller) who has money and muscle. Help arrives from an unlikely source – a city doctor (Norman Kaye) and his family, passing though on holiday, and a lonely pilot (Simon Chilvers), who sells them a plane. They band together against the enemy, but Mike and Johnny argue over strategy and the doctor’s adventurous daughter (Lisa Peers).'
Source: Australian Screen.
Continuum began as a joint initiative between Tom O'Regan at Murdoch University and Brian Shoesmith at Edith Cowan University, Perth. From 1991-5 it was wholly located in the Centre for Research in Culture and Communication at Murdoch University. From mid-1995 it was located in the Department of Media Studies at Edith Cowan University.
Continuum is a thematically based cultural studies journal. The primary focus of the journal is upon screen media, but it also includes publishing, broadcasting and public exhibitionary media such as museums and sites. Journal editors are particularly interested in (1) the history and practice of screen media in Australasia and Asia ; (2) the connections between such media (particularly between film, TV, publishing, visual arts and exhibitionary sites). Each issue is devoted to the exploration of a particular cultural site. Sites have included Indigenous media, television, Asian cinema, media discourse, film style, publishing, photography, radio, 'Screening Cultural Studies', electronic arts in Australia and 'Critical Multiculturalism'. The journal is committed to articulating the energies, fragmentations, and loose coalitions that attend such cultural sites.
(Source : Continuum)
Mick 'Crocodile' Dundee runs an outback adventure business with his trusted friend and self-proclaimed mentor Walter Reilly. When he survives a crocodile attack, the news travels well beyond the Northern Territory, and a glamorous New York journalist, Sue Charlton, arrives to interview him. He invites her to come with him to the place where he was attacked. When Sue herself is attacked by a croc, Mick saves her. This leads to an invitation for Mick to visit his first ever city: New York City. Mick finds the culture and life in New York City a lot different than his home.
In the early 1900s, the spirited and talented Laura Tweedle Ramsbotham arrives at an exclusive Melbourne ladies' college, only to be greeted with jeers and treated as a country bumpkin. Although she is defiant towards her peers, the pressure almost defeats her. She soon learns, however, to be as ruthless as the other girls. Caught out after inventing an illicit liaison with the handsome new minister, she becomes a pariah until she is taken under the wing of an older girl, the elegant and kindly Evelyn Suitor. Laura subsequently falls in love with Evelyn, causing the latter to leave the school in order to escape Laura's attentions. Laura eventually completes her schooling, winning a two-year music scholarship to study piano.
Source: Australian Screen.
'Couched in terms more suited to a sensationalist TV movie, this Australian production unashamedly employs melodramatic symbolism to emphasise the unbelievable truth of its true-life subject. Director Frank Shields secures a full-throttle performance from Ralph Schicha, as the brutal husband who not only subjects wife Kerry Mack to endless domestic violence, but also forces her to participate in the bank raids that sustain his neo-Nazi activities. Although there are references to the Baader-Meinhof group, ultimately the film is clearly less interested in politics than in the tempestuous marriage.'
Source: Radio Times (http://www.radiotimes.com/film/kbbdx/URL). (Sighted: 17/6/2013)
'Sandy, a geologist, finds herself stuck on a field trip to the Pilbara desert with a Japanese man she finds inscrutable, annoying and decidedly arrogant. Hiromitsu's view of her is not much better. Things go from bad to worse when they become stranded in one of the most remote regions on earth. JAPANESE STORY is a journey of change and discovery for its two lead characters.'
Source: Screen Australia.
'On a lonely cattle station in the Northern Territory, a newly born Aboriginal baby is adopted by a white woman in place of her own child who has died. The child is raised as a white child and forbidden any contact with the Aborigines on the station. Years later, Jedda is drawn by the mysteries of the Aboriginal people but restrained by her upbringing. Eventually she is fascinated by a full-blood Aboriginal, Marbuck, who arrives at the station seeking work and is drawn to his campfire by his song. He takes her away as his captive and returns to his tribal lands, but he is rejected by his tribe for having broken their marriage taboos. Pursued by the men from Jedda's station and haunted by the death wish of his own tribe, Marbuck is driven insane and finally falls, with Jedda, over a cliff.'
(Synopsis from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School website, http://library.aftrs.edu.au)
'A woman disappears. Four marriages are drawn into a tangled web of love, deceit, sex and death. Not all of them survive. LANTANA is a psychological thriller about love. It's about the mistakes we make, the consequences we suffer, and the attempts we make to fix things up.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 4/12/2013)
'How do you learn to love again when the pain of the past won't let you go? Tracy Heart has set herself the humble goal of owning her own business. The return of her ex-boyfriend Jonny, the criminal aspirations of her brother Ray and the emotional draw of ex-footy star Lionel create friction for Tracy, and her bond of trust with her mother Janelle is tested. A story about families. About lies. And about learning to love again.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 6/8/2013)
'Nonna Katia, Christina and Josie are three generations of Italian-Australian women living together in a hothouse atmosphere of love, support...and drama on an operatic scale.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 23/10/2012)
In this sequel to the original Mad Max, Max finds himself involved with a small group of settlers who live around a small working oil refinery, producing that most precious of products in a post-apocalyptic society: petrol.
A dark portrait of barely sympathetic, disaffected youth, Metal Skin tells the story of four social misfits whose greatest thrill is putting the pedal to the metal and drag racing their problems into oblivion. Against this background of fast cars and empty lives, the four develop a strange and complex relationship. Central to the narrative are Psycho Joe, a petrol-head with limited social skills who lives with his mentally ill father, and the womanising Dazey, whose girlfriend suffers physically and mentally for his hobby. Joe and Dazey first meet at the local supermarket where Joe has just been employed after years of unemployment. Into the mix comes Savina, a Satan-worshipping witch. While interested in Dazey, even though he is 'taken,' Savina finds herself having to fend off Joe's hopeless advances. The nihilism of these young characters, coupled with parental disputes, leads to various tragedies.
Some reviews of Metal Skin suggest that it draws on the tropes of Arthurian legends, linking the film's title to a quotation from John Boorman's 1981 Excalibur.
On St Valentine's Day 1900, three schoolgirls and a teacher from an exclusive English-style boarding school go missing at the mysterious Hanging Rock in central Victoria. One of the girls is found alive a week later, but the others are never seen again. As morale within the school begins to disintegrate, the headmistress's increasingly incoherent anger is turned towards one student, leading to tragic consequences. Although the police suspect Michael Fitzhubert, a young English aristocrat, and his manservant Albert, who were in the area at the time the girls disappeared, the mystery is never solved. As Paul Byrnes (Australian Screen) notes, the suggested scenarios range from the 'banal and explicable (a crime of passion) to deeply mystical (a crime of nature).'
[Source: Australian Screen]'Prime Mover is a diesel-charged love story about ambition, pressure, responsibility and the love shared by a man, a woman and his truck.'
Source: Porchlight Films website, http://www.porchlightfilms.com.au
Sighted: 19/08/2008
A vicious razorback boar terrorises the Australian outback, beginning with the death of a small child, whose grandfather is tried for his murder but acquitted. An American journalist (who holds strong conservationist views) follows the story and is attacked by two locals, who leave her for the boar to kill. Her husband then comes to Australia, determined to seek the boar who killed his wife (and, incidentally, revenge himself on the two locals).
Written by prolific screen-writer Everett De Roche, the film is based on a novel of the same name by American novelist Peter Brennan (a novel that, apparently, bears little resemblance to the film). The first full-length film directed by Russell Mulcahy, Razorback is a bridge between Mulcahy's early work on video clips and his later, more recognisable genre films, beginning (only two years after Razorback) with Highlander.
According to David Carroll at Tabula Rasa, 'Razorback is perhaps the most recognisable 'horror' film from
Australia. It has a rising young director in the form of Russell
Mulcahy, some reasonably well-known faces, both Australian and American,
and a giant pig. It also has a depiction of the Australian outback as,
basically, hell'.
Carroll specifies of the way in which the film approaches Australia (as a concept, rather than simply a country) that 'The brothers, their factory, the nightmare landscape and the pig itself, are all presented as a single, coherent malevolence. I have written previously, in more than one place, that the landscape is the defining feature of Australian horror. Razorback extends the idea into expressionism'. He emphasises that 'Of course, all this unnaturalistic splendour could just be attributed to shoddy film-making, but I don't think so. The change in tone and the way things are shot in different locations, such as Sarah's farm and the factory, is very striking, whilst the town itself shifts between the two. There seem to be two different realities, and a slippery border between them.'
Source: Tabula Rasa (http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusHorror/Razorback.html). (Sighted: 15/6/2012)
'Samson and Delilah tells the story of two Aboriginal teenagers in a remote community. They live in a sparse environment but one that absorbs all manner of cultural influences, where dot painting and country music exist side by side. Samson gets through his days by sniffing, while Delilah is the caregiver for her nana before taking a moment for herself to listen to Latino music. Their journey ranges across many of the most urgent issues concerning Indigenous people in Australia, homelessness, poverty, domestic violence and substance abuse, but it does so with tenderness, dignity, and even humour.'
Source: Adelaide Film Festival website, www.adelaidefilmfestival.org/ Sighted: 23/02/2009
In the vein of stranger-comes-to-town westerns, lawyer Asta Cadell (Deborah Lee Furness) is forced to stop in the small country town of Ginaborak to await parts for her motorcycle. The men of the town act very aggressively. The women cower. Asta is offered a place to stay by Tim Curtis (Tony Barry) a local mechanic and learns of the rape of his daughter Lizze (Simone Buchanan) the previous evening. As Asta befriends Lizze, she is horrified to discover that the men repeatedly gang rape the women of Ginborak.
Source: Reading Room, 'Shame', http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/film/dbase/2003/shame.htm (Sighted 7/10/11)
Shine is the true story of David Helfgott, a brilliant pianist whose musical gift is nearly compromised by the emotional strain of his personal life. A child prodigy whose interpretive genius promised a brilliant career as a concert pianist, David grew up under the tyrannical parenting of his father. Their turbulent relationship almost destroys David's promise and threatens his fragile mental balance. When an unlikely romance with a remarkable woman brings stability to David's chaotic world, he returns to concert performance in triumph. Freed from the difficult legacy of his father's influence, his musical talent prevails.
(Source: Libraries Australia)
A light-hearted look at the politics and intrigue of competitive ballroom dancing, the storyline focuses on Scott Hastings, who, his ambitious mother Shirley believes, will become champion with his current partner Liz. When Scott tries to introduce his own steps into their routine (against Pan-Pacific Championship rules), Liz leaves him for a rival partner. Without a partner, Scott eventually agrees to dance with Fran, a shy student at the academy run by his mother. When he meets her father and grandmother, Scott leans how to put passion into his movements, especially through the paso doble. In a last ditch effort to see her son become the Pan-Pacific Champion, Shirley convinces him to partner Tina Sparkle, which he reluctantly does. When he finally realises what he has done, he implores Fran to partner him. When they are disqualified from the competition, the audience (led by Scott's father, Barry) gives them a standing ovation and Scott and Fran go on to perform their version of the paso doble.
[Source: Australian Screen]
Film adaptation of Anthony Fingleton's autobiography.
Italian sports journalist Nino Culotta is lured to Sydney during the mid-1960s to work for his brother's new magazine for migrant Italians. When he arrives in the country, however, Nino finds out that there is no magazine and that his brother has taken off with the investors' cash. Left in the lurch is his brother's business partner, Kay Kelly. Nino vows to pay off his brother's debt and gets a job as a builder's labourer. In doing so, he learns how to talk, act, and drink like an Australian male. His numerous attempts to woo Kay are repeatedly rebuffed with humorous results, but in the end she falls in love with him. Nino's introduction to the country and its culture finds him bemused but ultimately confident that he has a future here.
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image suggests this film is 'very much a product of the assimilationist view dominating Australian immigration policy at the time'.
Nineteen-year-old Jimmy finds himself accidentally in debt to local mob boss Pando, after failing to deliver $10,000 to a Bondi woman as promised. Through a series of accidents and with the intervention (often indirect) of Jimmy's dead brother (who acts as a guardian angel throughout the film), Jimmy attempts to work his way out of debt and secure both his own future and that of his love interest, Alex.
'Pete and Jerry are cousins in their early twenties living together on the outskirts of Sydney. Their life consists of dead-end jobs, getting stoned, hanging out at the local pub and talking about girls. Which is fine until Cheryl enters their lives; she's sexy, confident and dangerous. When they both fall in love with her their lives spiral out of control. Dramatic, tense and explosive, WEST explores what happens when you discover how few choices you have in life...'
Source: Screen Australia.
Inspired in part by some unsolved murders in the Australian outback, and by the gruesome backpacker murders committed by Ivan Milat in NSW during the late 1980s/early 1990s, Wolf Creek tells the story of three young backpackers, Ben Mitchell, an Australian, and Liz Hunter and Kristy Earl, both English. Although the girls don't know Ben all that well, he and Liz fancy each other. After buying a car in Broome, situated in the far north coast of Western Australia, the trio head east with the intention of driving across the top end to Cairns (Queensland). At the end of their first day in the desert, their car breaks down at a deserted tourist site - the large crater of a meteorite. Later that night a truck arrives, driven by a real outback character, Mick Taylor. He tows them to his isolated camp at an abandoned mine site, promising to fix their car. All three tourists fall asleep after Mick drugs them. When Liz wakes up, she is bound and gagged and her friends are missing and the nightmare begins.
'Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself.
'One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast...' (From the publisher's website.)
'''Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
'Tolstoy wasn't thinking specifically of the Harrison family when he wrote those words, but maybe he should have been. George Harrison is twenty-eight and afraid of the dark. His father is dead and his mother lives in la-la land. Reeling from a broken heart, and still coping with the trauma of a childhood home invasion, George works in a dead-end job in a bowling alley and finds rare solace in the giant painting of an alien that sits outside his room. His brother Matthew isn't much better off. After losing the love of his life in a traumatic car accident, he's retreated into a private world of sleep where he dreams about falling in love with comedienne Magda Szubanski.
'Matthew and George are each stuck in their own little messed-up world, with no idea how to get out, and neither of them is sure whether their unhappy family will ever finally pull together, or simply just fall apart.' (Publisher's blurb)
Swallow the Air follows the life of 15-year-old May Gibson, an Aboriginal girl from New South Wales whose mother commits suicide. May and her brother go to live with their aunt, but eventually May travels further afield, first to Redfern's Block in Sydney, then to the Northern Territory, and finally into central New South Wales. She travels to escape, but also in pursuit of a sense of her own history, family, and identity.
An initiative of the Indigenous Branch of the Australian Film Commission (AFC), From Sand to Celluloid comprises six films that have been packaged and distributed by Australian Film Institute Distribution (AFID) and Film Australia. The initial conception for the series came from the Indigenous Drama Initiative, set in 1994 with the express intention of advancing the development and production of films created by Indigenous Australians and increasing their participation in all areas of the film and television industry. The first project initiated was the development and production of six ten-minute dramas for television. Expressions of interest were called for from Indigenous Australians nationally. The ten applicants chosen (from forty seven) attended a visual storytelling workshop held in Melbourne in 1995. The Initiative utilised the assistance of all the state film assistance agencies and a pre-sale from SBS with an agreement to broadcast on SBS in July 1996, as well as the full participation of Film Australia through its funding of one of the productions. Five projects were further selected to go into production, along with Sally Riley's film Fly Peewee Fly (produced by Film Australia), and were delivered to the AFC on 30 March, 1996. Indigenous Australians were employed in both cast and crew positions.
In order to encourage a wider recognition and appreciation of the work of Indigenous Australians, the AFC supported the national distribution and exhibition of the films through the Australian Film Institute Distribution (AFID). AFID distributed the films as a package under the title of From Sand to Celluloid and the films screened at twenty-four locations, from as far afield as Cooper Pedy in South Australia to Broome in Western Australia, and were attended by a total of approximately 7,200 people.
As a unified collection, the films offer more than a two-dimensional victim-oppressor approach. They challenge viewers at all levels: as fellow citizens, as parents, as observers, and as fellow members of Indigenous communities. From Sand to Celluloid challenges viewers with many uncomfortable aspects of Australia's too-recent history. These include the active discrimination practised against Indigenous people in public places such as swimming pools and cinemas in country towns around Australia and the 'stolen generation': children taken away without their parents' consent and placed into homes or in white foster homes, with devastating effect on them and their families. The series is an essential resource for Indigenous studies, Australian history film studies, English legal studies, human relationship courses, and social studies.
[Source: Australian Film Commission, http://www.afc.gov.au/archive/annrep/ar95_96/indig.html]
'This is the true story of Rose, a glamorous Shanghai nightclub singer, who struggles to survive in '70s Australia with two young children. Based on writer/director Tony Ayres' own life, The Home Song Stories is an epic tale of mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, unrequited love, secrets and betrayal.'
Source: Australian Film Commission. (Sighted: 8/10/2014)
'For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life.' (From the author's website.)
'My Brilliant Career was written by Stella Franklin (1879-1954) when she was just nineteen years old. The novel struggled to find an Australian publisher, but was published in London and Edinburgh in 1901 after receiving an endorsement from Henry Lawson. Although Franklin wrote under the pseudonym 'Miles Franklin', Lawson’s preface makes it clear that Franklin is, as Lawson puts it 'a girl.'
'The novel relates the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a strong-willed young woman of the 1890s growing up in the Goulburn area of New South Wales and longing to be a writer.' (Publication summary)
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Through the crumbling ruins of the once splendid Xanadu, Miss Hare wanders, half-mad. In the wilderness she stumbles upon an Aboriginal artist and a Jewish refugee. They place themselves in the care of a local washerwoman. In a world of pervasive evil, all four have been independently damaged and discarded. Now in one shared vision they find themselves bound together, understanding the possibility of redemption.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage ed.).
Alvin is an average man, except that women find him irresistible. The only woman that Alvin really wants is his platonic friend Tina, but he appears to feel no sexual desire for her. He follows her to a convent, where he gets a job as gardener.
A 'sexist sex comedy', made during the peak of the feminist debate in Australia, Alvin Purple reverses the feminist polemic of men oppressing women by having its protagonist pursued by a constant stream of predatory women. He is victimised even more when he refuses sex. Paul Byrnes (Australian Screen) notes that 'the film was [also] reacting against entrenched puritanical attitudes in Australian society. To some it was prurient farce; to others, it was exposing the repression that produced such prurience.'
Tom O'Regan notes in 'Cinema Oz: The Ocker Films' (1989) that Alvin's 'ordinariness seems irresistible to women. The comedy is based on incongruity. Sex is rendered as slapstick. Jokes are at the expense of bastions of hypocrisy - psychiatry, the press and the law. The would-be recessive hero is the object of male sexual fantasy - sex without responsibility - a fantasy with which women could also apparently identify.'
[Source: Paul Byrnes, Tom O'Regan, and Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper]
Continuum began as a joint initiative between Tom O'Regan at Murdoch University and Brian Shoesmith at Edith Cowan University, Perth. From 1991-5 it was wholly located in the Centre for Research in Culture and Communication at Murdoch University. From mid-1995 it was located in the Department of Media Studies at Edith Cowan University.
Continuum is a thematically based cultural studies journal. The primary focus of the journal is upon screen media, but it also includes publishing, broadcasting and public exhibitionary media such as museums and sites. Journal editors are particularly interested in (1) the history and practice of screen media in Australasia and Asia ; (2) the connections between such media (particularly between film, TV, publishing, visual arts and exhibitionary sites). Each issue is devoted to the exploration of a particular cultural site. Sites have included Indigenous media, television, Asian cinema, media discourse, film style, publishing, photography, radio, 'Screening Cultural Studies', electronic arts in Australia and 'Critical Multiculturalism'. The journal is committed to articulating the energies, fragmentations, and loose coalitions that attend such cultural sites.
(Source : Continuum)
Set in a suburb of Sydney's North Shore on the night of the 1969 Australian Federal Election, this is a cinematic adaptation of David Williamson's 1971 satire of university-educated, upwardly mobile Australian Labor Party supporters. The gathering is hoping to celebrate the ALP's victory after two decades of conservative government, but as the results are televised throughout the night, this appears increasingly unlikely. The men then devote their energies to drinking and debauching with the younger women, much to the anger of their wives or girlfriends. As the night wears on and hopes fade, there is fighting and much disappointment.
The film's satire (as with the play) achieves its bite through a sense of what passes for naturalism. The essential ockerism of the men becomes more apparent as the party degenerates and the alcohol takes over. The critical focus sharpens and the humour becomes more cynical.
Set in 1965, Flirting is the sequel to The Year My Voice Broke. Danny Embling is now seventeen and a full-time boarder at St Alban's College. Although Danny's stutter and unsportsmanlike physique make him an object of derision to many of his fellow students, his life isn't all bad: he has a perfect view of Circester College, his college's sister school, from his dormitory window. The narrative follows his friendship with Thandiwe Adjewa, the daughter of an African Nationalist on an academic post in Canberra and a student at Circester. Danny and Thandiwe become kindred spirits, lovers, and problems for their teachers, whose methods of maintaining control are long detention sessions and a good thrashing with the cane. The only support they receive is from Nicola Radcliffe, Circhester's head prefect, who is sympathetic to their plight.
Based on an original idea by Peter Weir, The Last Wave concerns a young Sydney lawyer who, while defending four Aboriginal men against a murder charge, becomes troubled by dreams. He soon begins to feel the pull of magic forces beneath the surface of civilisation. A series of apparently random occurences assume a disturbing pattern and the city becomes a facade for a place of ancient ritual.
Beginning in Australia in the late 1940s, when movie theatres were the only source of audiovisual news coverage, the narrative follows the exploits of Len Maguire and his young sidekick Chris as they cover the big news stories for the Cinetone newsreel company. Len is a doggedly dependable and ever-cautious senior cameraman, trapped in a world of changing values. Len always knows the right thing to do, but becomes troubled as his marriage falters, his job becomes threatened by the arrival of television, and Cinetone is taken over and its work marginalised. Len's loyalties to the Catholic Church, the Labor Party, and his family are juxtaposed against both his brother/rival cameraman Frank--who sells out his values, abandons his responsibilities, and heads off to success in the USA--and his cocky young assistant, Chris.
The first feature film for Phillip Noyce, Newsfront also depicts the increasing changes to the Australian cultural and political landscape, tracing social shifts from the first waves of European post-war immigration through to the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne.
On St Valentine's Day 1900, three schoolgirls and a teacher from an exclusive English-style boarding school go missing at the mysterious Hanging Rock in central Victoria. One of the girls is found alive a week later, but the others are never seen again. As morale within the school begins to disintegrate, the headmistress's increasingly incoherent anger is turned towards one student, leading to tragic consequences. Although the police suspect Michael Fitzhubert, a young English aristocrat, and his manservant Albert, who were in the area at the time the girls disappeared, the mystery is never solved. As Paul Byrnes (Australian Screen) notes, the suggested scenarios range from the 'banal and explicable (a crime of passion) to deeply mystical (a crime of nature).'
[Source: Australian Screen]A vicious razorback boar terrorises the Australian outback, beginning with the death of a small child, whose grandfather is tried for his murder but acquitted. An American journalist (who holds strong conservationist views) follows the story and is attacked by two locals, who leave her for the boar to kill. Her husband then comes to Australia, determined to seek the boar who killed his wife (and, incidentally, revenge himself on the two locals).
Written by prolific screen-writer Everett De Roche, the film is based on a novel of the same name by American novelist Peter Brennan (a novel that, apparently, bears little resemblance to the film). The first full-length film directed by Russell Mulcahy, Razorback is a bridge between Mulcahy's early work on video clips and his later, more recognisable genre films, beginning (only two years after Razorback) with Highlander.
According to David Carroll at Tabula Rasa, 'Razorback is perhaps the most recognisable 'horror' film from
Australia. It has a rising young director in the form of Russell
Mulcahy, some reasonably well-known faces, both Australian and American,
and a giant pig. It also has a depiction of the Australian outback as,
basically, hell'.
Carroll specifies of the way in which the film approaches Australia (as a concept, rather than simply a country) that 'The brothers, their factory, the nightmare landscape and the pig itself, are all presented as a single, coherent malevolence. I have written previously, in more than one place, that the landscape is the defining feature of Australian horror. Razorback extends the idea into expressionism'. He emphasises that 'Of course, all this unnaturalistic splendour could just be attributed to shoddy film-making, but I don't think so. The change in tone and the way things are shot in different locations, such as Sarah's farm and the factory, is very striking, whilst the town itself shifts between the two. There seem to be two different realities, and a slippery border between them.'
Source: Tabula Rasa (http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusHorror/Razorback.html). (Sighted: 15/6/2012)
'A fly-on-the-wall mockumentary about the tears, tantrums and tiaras in the world of competitive dance eisteddfods. Amidst petty politics and creative controversy, RAZZLE DAZZLE delves into the lives of three stage mothers and their relationships with the dance school, each other and their children.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 18/12/2013)
Tourists taking a crocodile-watching river cruise in Kakadu National Park find themselves trapped in the territory of a large, aggressive salt-water crocodile.
The first film in the Saw franchise, Saw introduces 'Jigsaw', a killer whose complex and sadistic traps are designed to 'test' his victims.
A light-hearted look at the politics and intrigue of competitive ballroom dancing, the storyline focuses on Scott Hastings, who, his ambitious mother Shirley believes, will become champion with his current partner Liz. When Scott tries to introduce his own steps into their routine (against Pan-Pacific Championship rules), Liz leaves him for a rival partner. Without a partner, Scott eventually agrees to dance with Fran, a shy student at the academy run by his mother. When he meets her father and grandmother, Scott leans how to put passion into his movements, especially through the paso doble. In a last ditch effort to see her son become the Pan-Pacific Champion, Shirley convinces him to partner Tina Sparkle, which he reluctantly does. When he finally realises what he has done, he implores Fran to partner him. When they are disqualified from the competition, the audience (led by Scott's father, Barry) gives them a standing ovation and Scott and Fran go on to perform their version of the paso doble.
[Source: Australian Screen]
Set in 1956 on an outback sheep station, the narrative explores the life of the old-time shearers: sweat-soaked days and rum-soaked nights, bloody two-fisted punch ups ... and the scab labour brought in during the shearers' strike of 1956. Central to the main storyline is Foley, a gun shearer who has been unbeaten in the tally for ten years, but who now arrives at the station aware that his days as the fastest shearer are now numbered.
Nineteen-year-old Jimmy finds himself accidentally in debt to local mob boss Pando, after failing to deliver $10,000 to a Bondi woman as promised. Through a series of accidents and with the intervention (often indirect) of Jimmy's dead brother (who acts as a guardian angel throughout the film), Jimmy attempts to work his way out of debt and secure both his own future and that of his love interest, Alex.
After a shower of mysterious meteorites turns the inhabitants of a small Australian fishing village into ravenous zombies, the infected must band together to find a way out.
Adapted from James Vance Marshall's novel The Children, Walkabout begins with a father-of-two driving his fourteen-year-old daughter and six-year-old son into the desert. Overwhelmed by the pressure on his life, he plans to kill them and then commit suicide, but his plan goes wrong. The siblings wander the desert aimlessly until they meet a young Aboriginal boy who is on a solitary walkabout as part of his tribal initiation into manhood. The three become travelling companions. Gradually, sexual tension develops between the girl and the Aboriginal boy. When they approach white civilisation, the Aboriginal boy dances a night-long courtship dance, but the girl is ignorant of its meaning. When she and her brother awake in the morning, they find the boy dead, hanging from a tree. The brother and sister make their way to the nearby mining town, where they receive a cool welcome from the townsfolk.
'Pete and Jerry are cousins in their early twenties living together on the outskirts of Sydney. Their life consists of dead-end jobs, getting stoned, hanging out at the local pub and talking about girls. Which is fine until Cheryl enters their lives; she's sexy, confident and dangerous. When they both fall in love with her their lives spiral out of control. Dramatic, tense and explosive, WEST explores what happens when you discover how few choices you have in life...'
Source: Screen Australia.
Inspired in part by some unsolved murders in the Australian outback, and by the gruesome backpacker murders committed by Ivan Milat in NSW during the late 1980s/early 1990s, Wolf Creek tells the story of three young backpackers, Ben Mitchell, an Australian, and Liz Hunter and Kristy Earl, both English. Although the girls don't know Ben all that well, he and Liz fancy each other. After buying a car in Broome, situated in the far north coast of Western Australia, the trio head east with the intention of driving across the top end to Cairns (Queensland). At the end of their first day in the desert, their car breaks down at a deserted tourist site - the large crater of a meteorite. Later that night a truck arrives, driven by a real outback character, Mick Taylor. He tows them to his isolated camp at an abandoned mine site, promising to fix their car. All three tourists fall asleep after Mick drugs them. When Liz wakes up, she is bound and gagged and her friends are missing and the nightmare begins.
'Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself.
'One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast...' (From the publisher's website.)
'''Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
'Tolstoy wasn't thinking specifically of the Harrison family when he wrote those words, but maybe he should have been. George Harrison is twenty-eight and afraid of the dark. His father is dead and his mother lives in la-la land. Reeling from a broken heart, and still coping with the trauma of a childhood home invasion, George works in a dead-end job in a bowling alley and finds rare solace in the giant painting of an alien that sits outside his room. His brother Matthew isn't much better off. After losing the love of his life in a traumatic car accident, he's retreated into a private world of sleep where he dreams about falling in love with comedienne Magda Szubanski.
'Matthew and George are each stuck in their own little messed-up world, with no idea how to get out, and neither of them is sure whether their unhappy family will ever finally pull together, or simply just fall apart.' (Publisher's blurb)
Swallow the Air follows the life of 15-year-old May Gibson, an Aboriginal girl from New South Wales whose mother commits suicide. May and her brother go to live with their aunt, but eventually May travels further afield, first to Redfern's Block in Sydney, then to the Northern Territory, and finally into central New South Wales. She travels to escape, but also in pursuit of a sense of her own history, family, and identity.
An initiative of the Indigenous Branch of the Australian Film Commission (AFC), From Sand to Celluloid comprises six films that have been packaged and distributed by Australian Film Institute Distribution (AFID) and Film Australia. The initial conception for the series came from the Indigenous Drama Initiative, set in 1994 with the express intention of advancing the development and production of films created by Indigenous Australians and increasing their participation in all areas of the film and television industry. The first project initiated was the development and production of six ten-minute dramas for television. Expressions of interest were called for from Indigenous Australians nationally. The ten applicants chosen (from forty seven) attended a visual storytelling workshop held in Melbourne in 1995. The Initiative utilised the assistance of all the state film assistance agencies and a pre-sale from SBS with an agreement to broadcast on SBS in July 1996, as well as the full participation of Film Australia through its funding of one of the productions. Five projects were further selected to go into production, along with Sally Riley's film Fly Peewee Fly (produced by Film Australia), and were delivered to the AFC on 30 March, 1996. Indigenous Australians were employed in both cast and crew positions.
In order to encourage a wider recognition and appreciation of the work of Indigenous Australians, the AFC supported the national distribution and exhibition of the films through the Australian Film Institute Distribution (AFID). AFID distributed the films as a package under the title of From Sand to Celluloid and the films screened at twenty-four locations, from as far afield as Cooper Pedy in South Australia to Broome in Western Australia, and were attended by a total of approximately 7,200 people.
As a unified collection, the films offer more than a two-dimensional victim-oppressor approach. They challenge viewers at all levels: as fellow citizens, as parents, as observers, and as fellow members of Indigenous communities. From Sand to Celluloid challenges viewers with many uncomfortable aspects of Australia's too-recent history. These include the active discrimination practised against Indigenous people in public places such as swimming pools and cinemas in country towns around Australia and the 'stolen generation': children taken away without their parents' consent and placed into homes or in white foster homes, with devastating effect on them and their families. The series is an essential resource for Indigenous studies, Australian history film studies, English legal studies, human relationship courses, and social studies.
[Source: Australian Film Commission, http://www.afc.gov.au/archive/annrep/ar95_96/indig.html]
'This is the true story of Rose, a glamorous Shanghai nightclub singer, who struggles to survive in '70s Australia with two young children. Based on writer/director Tony Ayres' own life, The Home Song Stories is an epic tale of mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, unrequited love, secrets and betrayal.'
Source: Australian Film Commission. (Sighted: 8/10/2014)
A story within a story and overlaid with narration, Ten Canoes takes place in two periods in the past. The first story, filmed in black-and-white as a reference to the 1930s ethnographic photography of Donald Thompson, concerns a young man called Dayindi who takes part in his first hunt for goose eggs. During the course of several trips to hunt, gather and build a bark canoe, his older brother Minygululu tells him a story about their ancestors and the old laws. The story is also about a young man who had no wife but who coveted one of his brother's wives, and also of the stranger who disrupted the harmony of their lives. It is cautionary tale because Minygululu is aware that Dayinidi desires his young and pretty third wife.
The second story (shot in colour) is set much further back in time. Yeeralparil is a young man who desires the third wife of his older brother Ridjimiraril. When Ridjimiraril's second wife disappears, he suspects a man from another tribe has been seen near the camp. After he spears the stranger he discovers that he was wrong. Knowing that he must face the man's relatives he chooses Yeeralparil to accompany him during the ritual payback. When Ridjimiraril dies from his wounds the tribe's traditions decree that Yeeralparil must inherit his brother's wives. The burden of these responsibilities, however, is more than the young man expects.