Cirrus@Austlit

'To say that 2020 has been a strange year is an understatement. Many who work in screen production, the arts, and the the creative sectors more broadly have suffered from cancellations, loss of income, delays, disconnection, and the associated stresses of pandemic life. At the same time screen texts and cultures have saved most of us – taken us through lockdown, entertained and engaged us, inspired, and sustained us perhaps more so now and in more ways than ever before. As life has changed, we see the foregrounding of the adaptability of screen works and screen culture, from COVID safe production practices to virtual audiences and the prominence of independent filmmaking, digital content creation, and online film festivals and screen events. The films, series and performances from Australasian auteurs, groups, teams, production cohorts and scholars have produced a range of cinematic, televisual and online stories and images worthy of celebration and interrogation. It is with this sense of inspiration and renewed interest that we look towards 2021.' (Anthony Lambert, Goodbye to 2020 introduction)

'Welcome to this special issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema, focusing on business aspects of the cinema industry. The five articles included in this special issue were developed in response to a call for papers for the 2020 Conference of the Australian Screen Production, Education and Research Association (ASPERA) which was to be held in Newcastle, NSW in June. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event - like many others - was significantly reorganised, with only a single day of on-line sessions in place of the traditional three days of live presentations and screenings. Fortunately, many of the ASPERA researchers who had intended to come to the conference decided to complete their written contributions, and it’s their work we present here.' (Editorial introduction)

'Welcome to the final issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema for 2019.

'This double issue comprises three diverse articles that take us from the creative city to reviews of Queer cinema, and on to questions surrounding the construction of an ageing female auteur/author.' (Editorial introduction)

'Welcome to the first issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema for 2019.

'This issue comprises two articles which deal with the paradoxical themes at work in politicised representations of gender and sexuality. In ‘Riding in cars as girls: discourses of victimhood, power and agency in Beneath Clouds and American Honey’, Samantha Cater places Australian film Beneath Clouds in a relationship with the US road movie American Honey. In doing so, the article foregrounds the overlapping themes of passivity, victimisation and objectification of young women on the one hand, and notions of resilience agency and self-determination on the other. Likewise, in charting the visibility of gay and lesbian representation/production in Australian film in the 1970s, Jessie Matheson’s ‘“about gays by gays”: The politics of representation in early Australian gay film culture, 1971–1982’, reveals the twin imperatives of developing queer film culture: challenging and subversive, on the one hand, but bound in many ways by aesthetic and industrial demands of acceptability and intelligibility.'  (Editor's Introduction)

'Across its history of four decades or more, a crucial component in the formation and maintenance of film studies in Australia has been the local and international exchange of ideas and critical formations facilitated by film studies (and associated) conferences and related organisations, including the Australian Screen Studies Association conferences and antecedents (ASSA, 1978–86), the biennial conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand and its precursors (FHAANZ, 1981–2015), the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia annual conferences (CSAA, 1991–present), and most recently, the biennial conference of the Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (SSAAANZ 2016-present). (Editorial introduction)

'Welcome to the first issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema for 2017.

'This issue comprises three articles that form a special section on horror themed films, edited by Mark Ryan and Ben Goldsmith, which have developed from their editorial work last year on papers from the conference of the Screen Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand. Taken together, both Buerger’s and Balenzatugui’s varied readings of The Babadook, and Speed’s timely revisiting of White Death, constitute the Australasian screen’s role in marking an unsettled period in contemporary culture.

'As always, please enjoy this issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema.' (Anthony Lambert Journal editor’s note)