Beneath Hill 60
( dir. Jeremy Sims
)
Australia
:
New South Wales Film and Television Office
,
2010
Z1678749
2010
single work
film/TV
(taught in 1 units)
Set in 1916, Beneath Hill 60 is the never-before told story of the Australian and German miners who served at the Western Front during the First World War. After enlisting in the Australian Imperial Forces, Queensland mining expert Oliver Woodward is sent to the front to take charge of a small group of miners during the one of the bloodiest battles in history. The soldier-miners from both sides drive their narrow tunnels under no man's land, attempting to out-manoeuvre and undermine each other as they create a great labyrinth of tunnels. It's a silent and savage war where one tiny sound can turn a man from hunter to hunted, where skilled listeners are more sought after than fighters.
Writers have always addressed political issues, from supporting or resisting revolution, to analysing the ethics of war or the sophistries of diplomatic language, to attacking the class politics of industrialisation, the exploitative dimensions of empire, sexual inequalities, prejudice and domestic violence. Literature has also drawn attention to the nexus between power and language: the ways in which language masks ideology, normalises inequality and stifles dissent. This course is designed to spotlight a series of central political issues with which writers have engaged from the Renaissance to the present.
