Cirrus@Austlit

'The impetus for the 1927 Royal Commission into the Moving Picture Industry was the US film companies' 'stranglehold' on the Australian film industry, the effects of which were perceived as undermining both Australian film businesses and Australian national identity. The Commissioners took evidence in seven Queensland towns, some quite small and isolated, with almost all exhibitors from these locations represented. This evidence constructs an in-depth picture of film business and consumption in regional Australia, as well as a social, cultural and economic portrait of the country on the cusp of the Great Depression. This article takes as its starting point the Commissioners' repeated comparison of the film industry and Queensland's sugar industry, and their suggestions that the film industry's problems could be solved by replicating the intervention and support given to the sugar industry by both State and Federal Governments. These references, the article argues, reveal the Commissioners' understanding of the film industry, and conjectures that these conceptualizations may still influence the way Australian films are watched today.' (Editor's abstract)

'Well after the end of the Culture Wars, the televisual representations of The Petrov Affair continue to flourish. `The Petrov Affair' profoundly changed the Australian ideals of modernity and conception of Communism, political espionage and migration in the 1950s. The 1987 miniseries The Petrov Affair (Michael Carson) was released at the height of the 1980s promotion of multiculturalism and the historical miniseries boom. It is not a spy thriller, nor a courtroom drama about the Royal Commission. The Petrov Affair is a delicate character study of the difficulties of deciding to immigrate and the ambivalence that lies at the nexus between modernity and migration. This article seeks to rehabilitate this forgotten docudrama and examine the relationship between modernity, mobility and migration in the cultural production that explored emerging multicultural policies. (Editor's abstract)

'The frontier outlaws of Australia and America have a long and storied relationship with cinema. Two of the most recent cinematic adaptations of these legends, Ned Kelly and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, act as excellent entry points into an exploration of this subject. By comparing the narrative structures of the two films in relation to the concept of 'the Outlaw Legend' and by highlighting the two films' respective positionings of the spectator - as filtered by concepts of national identity - an insight into the interwoven elements of man, myth and movie becomes apparent.' (Editor's abstract)

'Most histories of the dynamism of the Australian film industry in the 1970s explore feature films, but a vital part of the creativity and energy of the revival occurred in the non-feature sector. A significant site of experimentation and originality in form, content and technique was the Experimental Film and Television Fund (EFTF). From its inception in 1970, The Australian Film Institute (AFI) managed the fund until 1977 when the Australian Film Commission (AFC) assumed control of it. Drawing on a series of interviews with key players involved in the fund during the AFI's tenure, and research for the book, Shining a Light: 50 Years of the Australian Film Institute (French and Poole 2009), this article traces this significant period of the history of Australian film production, and proposes that the AFI played an important role in promoting modernist film practice, and the Australian film revival, through its management of the EFTF.' (Editor's abstract)

'In Australia (and globally), refugees and 'the environment' are major sources of anxiety that define the experience of living in modern times. Contemporary social policy is then a representational technology that speaks to environmental and crosscultural transactions within 'modern' Australian cinematic texts. This article tracks the conversational contours between policy on climate change and border control in Australia and representations of self-other and self-environment relations in Australian film produced in the latter period of the Howard era (1996-2007). Films have frequently sought to mobilize a range of visions and understandings of both security and sustainability, and of the associated productions of policy, identity and space. Such exchanges necessitate critical scrutiny of the politicized cultural contexts that produce them - and an awareness of the normative reassertions that accompany these cinematic mediations of modern Australian experience.' (Author's abstract)