This study is a collection of critical and scholarly analyses of the organisation of the Australian Film Industry since 1990. Particular emphasis is put on globalisation, authorship, national narrative and film aesthetics.

This study is a collection of critical and scholarly analyses of the organisation of the Australian Film Industry since 1990. Particular emphasis is put on globalisation, authorship, national narrative and film aesthetics.

This account of the changing organisation and output of the Australian cinema since 1990 balances accounts of government policy and industrial response with analyses of box-office successes and lesser-known movies.

Publisher Description

Provides an introduction to the products and context of the new Australian film industry which arose toward the end of the 1960s. Traces the development of Australian film, in terms of prominent directors and stars, consistent themes, styles and evolving genres. The evolution of the film genres peculiar to Australia, and the adaptation of conventional Hollywood forms (such as the musical and the road movie) are examined in detail through textual readings of landmark films. Films and trends discussed include: the period film and Picnic at Hanging Rock; the Gothic film and the Mad Max trilogy; camp and kitsch comedy and the Adventures of Pricilla, Queen of the Desert. The key issue of the revival (the definition, representation and propagation of a national image) is woven through analysis of the new Australian cinema.

The first comprehensive volume of original essays on Australian screen culture in the twenty-first century. A Companion to Australian Cinema is an anthology of original essays by new and established authors on the contemporary state and future directions of a well-established national cinema. A timely intervention that challenges and expands the idea of cinema, this book brings into sharp focus those facets of Australian cinema that have endured, evolved and emerged in the twenty-first century. The essays address six thematically-organized propositions – that Australian cinema is an Indigenous screen culture, an international cinema, a minor transnational imaginary, an enduring auteur-genre-landscape tradition, a televisual industry and a multiplatform ecology. Offering fresh critical perspectives and extending previous scholarship, case studies range from The Lego Movie, Mad Max, and Australian stars in Hollywood, to transnational co-productions, YouTube channels, transmedia and nature-cam documentaries. New research on trends – such as the convergence of television and film, digital transformations of screen production and the shifting roles of women on and off-screen – highlight how established precedents have been influenced by new realities beyond both cinema and the national. Written in an accessible style that does not require knowledge of cinema studies or Australian studies Presents original research on Australian actors, such as Cate Blanchett and Chris Hemsworth, their training, branding, and path from Australia to Hollywood Explores the films and filmmakers of the Blak Wave and their challenge to Australian settler-colonial history and white identity Expands the critical definition of cinema to include YouTube channels, transmedia documentaries, multiplatform changescapes and cinematic remix Introduces readers to founding texts in Australian screen studies A Companion to Australian Cinema is an ideal introductory text for teachers and students in areas including film and media studies, cultural and gender studies, and Australian history and politics, as well as a valuable resource for educators and other professionals in the humanities and creative arts.

Tom O'Regan's book is the first of its kind on Australian post-war cinema. It takes as its starting point Bazin's question 'What is cinema?'and asks what the construct of a 'national' cinema means. It looks at the broader concept from a different angle, taking film beyond the confines of 'art' into the broader cultural world. O'Regan's analysis situates Australian cinema in its historical and cultural perspective producing a valuable insight into the issues that have been raised by film policy, the cinema market place and public discourse on film production strategies. Since 1970 Australian film has enjoyed a revival. This book contains detailed critiques of the key films of this period and uses them to illustrate the recent theories on the international and Australian cinema industries. Its conclusions on the nature of the nation's cinema and the discourses within it are relevant within a far wider context; film as a global phenomenon.