Cirrus@Austlit

'This volume adopts a transversal South-South approach to the study of visual culture in transnational, transcultural, and geopolitical contexts.

'Every day hundreds of people travel back and forth between southern countries, including Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and South Africa. With these people travel cultures, experiences, memories, and images. This creates the conditions for the generation, sharing, and circulation of new knowledge that is both southern and about the South as a specific kind of material and imaginary territory (or territories). It does so through the study of the southern hemisphere’s screen cultures, addressing the broad spectrum of cultural expression in both traditional and new screen media, including film, television, video, digital, interactive, and online and portable technologies.' (Publication summary)

The third part of a three-volume work devoted to mapping the transnational history of Australian film studies, Volume 3: Documents concludes the project by gathering together the documents that were produced during the rise of film studies in Australian academia from 1975 to 1985. Through these sources, we see the development of the particularities of Australian film theory and criticism, its relationship to its international counterparts, the establishment of key positions and the directions in which they develop. Editors Constantine Verevis and Deane Williams here collect key articles, including the works of Paul Willemen, Sam Rohdie, Ross Gibson and Meaghan Morris, among many others. (Intellect)

'A three-volume project tracing key critical positions, people, and institutions in Australian film, Australian Film Theory and Criticism interrogates not only the origins of Australian film theory but also its relationships to adjacent disciplines and institutions. The second volume in the series, this book gathers interviews with national and international film theorists and critics to chart the development of different discourses in Australian film studies through the decades. Seeking to examine the position of film theorists and their relationship to film industry practitioners and policy makers, this volume succeeds mightily in reasserting Australian film's place on the international scholarly agenda.' (Publication summary)

'First part of a three volume series on Australian film theory and criticism, this book includes a preface by Patrice Petro. It outlines the historical implications and future possibilities of establishing new directions of inquiry for film studies both in Australia and internationally. This three-volume project seeks to provide a map of the local and international flows of Australian film theory and criticism. Volume 1 focuses on 1975-1985, a formative period for the discipline of film studies in Australia. Tracing critical positions, people, and institutions across this influential period, the authors examine a multitude of books and journal articles published in Australia and distributed internationally. At the same time, they offer important insights about the origins of Australian film theory and its relationship to such related disciplines as English, art history, and cultural studies. Ultimately, "Australian Film Theory and Criticism, Volume 1" delineates the historical implications - and reveals the future possibilities - of establishing new directions of inquiry for film studies in Australia and internationally.' (Publication summary)

'The post-war period in Australian cultural history sparked critical debate over notions of nation-building, multiculturalism and internationalization. Australian Post-War Documentary Film tackles all these issues in a considered and wide-ranging analysis of government, institutional and also radical documentaries.

'On one level, the book is a selective history of Australian documentary film in the immediate post-war years. It also charts the rise of a progressive film culture. As a whole it is a thorough study of the international flows of film culture. Williams illustrates these themes by critiquing the key films of the era, including the seminal

'The Back of Beyond, often cited as the greatest Australian film of all time. Australian Post-War Documentary Film retells film history by reading these documentaries as part of a nexus of international, and particularly Australian filmic, written and dramatic texts, with close attention to textual analysis. The book will appeal to anyone interested in international cinema, the way that it theorizes the period and offers a host of international comparisons, widening its ideas to the fabric of cultural production that surrounds all art works.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.