Cirrus@Austlit

'In this article, I will examine the work of contemporary Australian filmmaker Robert Connolly (b. 1967), a director who could be considered amongst the most successful contemporary filmmakers working in Australia today. While many of his colleagues have struggled to make their second (or even first) feature film, Connolly, in his various roles, has made a feature roughly every other year since graduating from the Australian Film Television and Radio School in the late 1990s. To date, he has written and directed four feature films, produced nearly a dozen others, worked on such quality television series as The Slap (2011), written and directed a made-for-television-movie, and produced the epic film adaptation of Tim Winton’s short story collection The Turning (2013). His track record in the contemporary industry makes him a significant case study, and as a means of introducing this analysis, I want to briefly consider Graeme Turner’s 1994 article “Whatever Happened to National Identity? Film and Nation in the 1990s” to help situate Connolly’s work in the context of Australian cinema and the narrative trends of recent decades.' (Author's Introduction)