Cirrus@Austlit

In this chapter Collins and Davis argue that the paradigm shift caused by the Mabo decision impacted on Australian historical consciousness forcing a reassessment of 'race relations', the colonial past and the moral legitimacy of non-Aboriginal national identity. In the aftermath of Mabo the authors examine how cinema is implicated in the process of reviewing and understanding the Australian past.

In this chapter Collins and Davis locate Australian Film within an international context in order to examine the interplay between globalisation, local industry strategies and national cinema in three Australian films. The films are analysed 'in terms of their industrial-commercial strategies within a national economic and cultural policy framework which positions Australian film as an international genre'. Source : Australian Cinema After Mabo (2004)

In this chapter Davis and Collins examine how the national 'imaginary' is shaped by new conditions involving the politics of identity 'informed by the tension between the claims of history and social mobility in the new economy.' The authors imply that the 'contemporary experiences of dislocated identities' underpinned by particular cultural notions regarding 'nation, class, race, ethnicity or gender' also involve the politics of memory based on a 'whitewashed version of British heritage.' Source : Australian Cinema After Mabo (2004).

In this chapter Collins and Davis analyse how the documentary Mabo : Life of an Island Man mediates 'public recognition of both the Mabo decision and Mabo 'the man'.' The authors also explore how the film 'has become a popular history of Mabo and what this success tells us about shifts in documentary filmmaking in the 1990s and the forms of spectatorship they can enable.' Source : Australian Cinema After Mabo (2004).

In this chapter Collins and Davis 'are intersted in how a familiar icon of Australian cinema, the landscape (in particular the desert landscape, the outback), is suddenly made strange (unbearable even) by a historic event and how this raises questions to do with historical amnesia, shock and memory in a national cinema. In order to sneak up on on this post-Mabo experience of aftershock, we want to place these films in relation to threee critical categories which have been important in making sense of the ad hoc diversity of Australian films.' Source : Australian Cinema After Mabo (2004)

'The foucs of this chapter is on the ways that the films Heartland, Cunamulla and Message from Moree send a message to the viewer about what's going on in the country. The asssunption that life in the the country is shaped by what happened after the frontier wars is axiomatic for these programs. In the 1990s, reconciliation policies at the national level have influenced film narratives about the survival of Aboriginal communities and the various ways that settler and Indigenous Australians have intermingled in the country.' The authors argue that 'these narratives have found their way through the public film-funding bodies to ABC Television and can thus be construed as contributing to the national interest rather than to the sphere of entertainment.' Source : Australian Cinema after Mabo (2004).

In this chapter, Collins and Davis analyse how emergent themes within contemporary Australian cultural studies, repudiate 'the 19th century bush as the template for a British-derived national identity, turning instead to the cosmopolitan city , the multi-cultural suburbs, and the hedonistic holiday coast as templates for the a dynamic, post-national, post-multi-cultural identity in the 21st century.' The authors argue that 'the problem of belonging and of being at home in Australia is evident in the afterwardness of the history wars that followed the Mabo decision.' Source : Australian Cinema after Mabo (2004).

In this chapter Collins and Davis argue that in bringing the story of enforced child removal to life, the film Rabbit-Proof Fence is a vehicle for retracing, reworking and recovering 'stolen histories.' According to the authors the films 'rhetorical elements of testimony and witnessing are best understood in terms of international screen studies debates about memory, history and trauma.' Source : Australian Cinema after Mabo (2004).

In this chapter Collins and Davis analyse how the films, Looking for Alibrandi, Head On and Beneath the Clouds 'invites us to consider the relation between the past and the present .' The authors argue that the stories these films tell, regarding 'coming of age, reveal a picture of young Australians as the inheritors of a nation divided on issues of race relations, land politics, national security, and how best to deal with the shameful episodes from our colonial past.' Although these films differ in style and content they express a common 'form of teen mobility fuelled by the desire to 'escape history' ... that is symptomatic of the specific difficulties of coming of age in post-Mabo Australia.' Source : Australian Cinema after Mabo (2004).

The proposal presented by Collins and Davis throughout this book is 'that the post-Mabo era in Australian cinema can be read through the metaphor of backtracking. This intermittent activity of reviewing, mulling over and renewing icons, landscapes, characters and stories defines contemporary Australian national cinema.' The conclusion that the authors draw from their analysis of Australian cinema is that 'in the post-Mabo context, this brooding passion for raking the national repetoire of icons serves as a vernacular mode of collective mourning, a process involving both grief-work and testimony.' Source : Australian Cinema after Mabo (2004).