Australian and New Zealand Cinema Research Papers (original) (raw)

This paper explores whether a leisure perspective explains volunteer motivations as perceived by managers of one event-based nonprofit organisation - Victoria’s Open Garden Scheme. The results identify that a leisure perspective does... more

This paper explores whether a leisure perspective explains volunteer motivations as perceived by managers of one event-based nonprofit organisation - Victoria’s Open Garden Scheme. The results identify that a leisure perspective does not explain all motivations, as some volunteers are socially motivated by a desire to give back to their community. Other motivations are less positive and less voluntary than is expected of leisure and volunteering in a traditional context. Suggestions are made for further research and managerial implications in regards to managing volunteers.

This article highlights the difficulties and implications of attempts to build legitimacy for state-funded cinema. Through a framing analysis of political debates and policy developments in New Zealand, and informed by international... more

This article highlights the difficulties and implications of attempts to build legitimacy for state-funded cinema. Through a framing analysis of political debates and policy developments in New Zealand, and informed by international concepts and perspectives from critical and cultural policy studies, it examines the discourses employed to justify offering public funds to New Zealand filmmakers, from the 1960s through to the late 2000s. By tracing the emergence and subsequent institutionalisation of cultural nationalism as a policy frame, the author explains how the New Zealand government came to fund, and justify its support of, the production of fictional films. While this frame has continued to legitimate cultural policy, it has had to make room for the discourse of economic rationalism, which undermines traditional justifications for film funding. Recent ‘creative industries’ discourse has not effectively reconciled these competing narratives. An inclusive and deliberative reframing process would be needed to institute a more widely supported legitimating discourse for publicly funded cinema.

This article examines the role that locality, cultural specificity and authentic voice play within current television industry shifts and transnational developments. Focussing on Top of the Lake, I explore its thematic and aesthetic... more

This article examines the role that locality, cultural specificity and authentic voice play within current television industry shifts and transnational developments. Focussing on Top of the Lake, I explore its thematic and aesthetic preoccupation with place, voice and nation by spotlighting issues of accent and vocal in/authenticity, detailing the controversy sparked when US star Elisabeth Moss was cast as New Zealand native, detective Robin Griffin. The adopted Antipodean accent furnished by Moss creates a highly ambivalent foregrounding and re-negotiation of the national within the particularly transnational space of post-broadcast ‘quality’ television. Presenting a ‘sonic spectacle’ (Holliday, Christopher. 2015. “The Accented American: The New Voices of British Stardom on US Television.” Journal of British Cinema and Television 12 (1): 63–82), Moss’ wobbly accent makes audiences doubly aware of the effort being expended to cue regional specificity and locale. In the following discussion, Moss’ vocal crafting in Top of the Lake is linked to the increasing importance given to authentic place and on-location shooting within post-broadcast television, as a means of fostering emotional pull and deep levels of viewer engagement. In Top of the Lake, links between place and authenticity are further interrogated via its self-aware invocation of touristic imagery and desires – made all the more nuanced due to Campion's presence as auteur and New Zealand's role as media-tourism mecca.

This article examines the evolution of Maori filmmaking since the 1980s and explores the Indigenous cinema in the context of developments in the New Zealand film industry. It does so by focusing on the predominantly state-funded... more

This article examines the evolution of Maori filmmaking since the 1980s and explores the Indigenous cinema in the context of developments in the New Zealand film industry. It does so by focusing on the predominantly state-funded production of Maori feature films while having Barry Barclay’s idea of Fourth Cinema in mind. This essay is divided in three parts. The first part traces the beginnings of Maori cinema back to the 1970s and introduces the first three feature films directed by a Maori filmmaker, Ngati (Barry Barclay, 1987), Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988), and Te Rua (Barry Barclay, 1991). The second part discusses the mainstream success of Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994) and the film’s paradoxical contribution to Maori cinema in the 1990s. The third and final part explores the intensified course of state-funded Maori filmmaking since the 2000s and addresses some of the opportunities and challenges facing the Indigenous cinema in the current environment of institutional and commercial globalization.

By assessing the historical and contemporary relationships between American and Australian cinemas, this collection sets out to encourage future studies on a growing field of inquiry. Its concentration on the complex historical and... more

By assessing the historical and contemporary relationships between American and Australian cinemas, this collection sets out to encourage future studies on a growing field of inquiry. Its concentration on the complex historical and contemporary relationships between these two cinemas taps directly into discussions of national cinema, transnationalism and global Hollywood. While most equivalent studies aim to define national cinema as independent from or in competition with Hollywood, this collection explores a more porous set of relationships through the varied production, distribution and exhibition associations between Hollywood and Australia. To explore this idea, a range of chapters investigate the influence that Australia has had on US cinema through the exportation of its stars, directors and other production personnel to Hollywood; while many of the other chapters chart the sustained influence of US cinema on Australia over the last 100 years. The authors represented in this book re-examine the concept and definition of Australian cinema in regard to a range of local, international and global practices and trends that blur neat categorizations of Australian national cinema. Although this concentration on US production, or influence, is particularly acute in relation to such developments as the opening of international film studios in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and the Gold Coast over the last 30 years, this book also examines a range of Hollywood financed and/or conceived films shot in Australia since the 1920s. Furthermore it surveys Hollywood models of production and genre, as well as American distribution and exhibition networks, that have altered the way Australians go to the cinema, the type of films they watch, and the kinds of movies they make. This book takes two key points in time - the 1920s and 1930s and the last 20 years - to chart the ongoing, shifting, resistant and dependent relationships between Australian and US cinema and how particular patterns of localism, nationalism, colonialism, transnationalism and globalization have shaped its course over the last century.

From the late 1940s until the late 1970s Melbourne was home to a dynamic Greek cinema circuit made up of some 30 different inner-city and suburban venues operated by a handful of vertically integrated exhibition/distribution businesses.... more

From the late 1940s until the late 1970s Melbourne was home to a dynamic Greek cinema circuit made up of some 30 different inner-city and suburban venues operated by a handful of vertically integrated exhibition/distribution businesses. Dionysos Films was amongst the first Greek film exhibition/distribution companies to form in Australia and from 1949 until 1956 it operated with little significant competition, establishing the parameters for a diasporic Greek film circuit that stretched across regional and metropolitan Australia and into New Zealand. This article measures the shadow cast by Dionysos Films (and its charismatic proprietor Stathis Raftopoulos) over the history of Antipodean Greek film experiences and the implications that this neglected aspect of Australian and Greek film history has for our understanding of the national cinemas in both countries.

Shining A Light: 50 Years of the AFI traces the progress of the film and television industries as well as screen culture within Australia over the past half century, through the lens of one organisation, the Australian Film Institute (AFI... more

Shining A Light: 50 Years of the AFI traces the progress of the film and television industries as well as screen culture within Australia over the past half century, through the lens of one organisation, the Australian Film Institute (AFI | AACTA).
Since its establishment in 1958, the AFI has played a central role in nurturing and supporting both screen culture and production, from small beginnings to an internationally recognised billion dollar industry. Shining A Light maps out the history of the AFI | AACTA (henceforth referred to as the AFI) and the wider industry over the past fifty years and explores the relationship of screen culture to a successful production industry.
The book is a timely and significant contribution to scholarship on Australian cinema, being published at a critical time in Australian film history. The authors offer an insider’s perspective, having interviewed twenty-seven key players from the AFI’s history, and have sifted through volumes of documentary evidence in chronicling the history of the AFI, its successes and its role in Australian screen culture past, present and future.
The writers’ collective experience spans filmmaking, academic research and teaching, film journalism, employment and service in key screen culture organisations as well as an abiding passion for Australian cinema – bringing to the book both the filmmaker or industry perspective, and academic scholarship.

Introductory overview of New Zealand artists who began working in film and video between 1970 and 1985, following their work up to 2010 and beyond. This piece was originally titled A Place Near Here and published in Illusions #35. It... more

Introductory overview of New Zealand artists who began working in film and video between 1970 and 1985, following their work up to 2010 and beyond. This piece was originally titled A Place Near Here and published in Illusions #35. It has been significantly updated since then. Back issues of Illusions are available from PO Box 6476, Marion Square, Wellington, New Zealand.

Alan Duff’s second novel, published in 1990, raised bitter controversies over its depiction of native alienation in urban New Zealand. Duff, himself part Maori and writing from his own slum experience, shifted the responsibilities for the... more

Alan Duff’s second novel, published in 1990, raised bitter controversies over its depiction of native alienation in urban New Zealand. Duff, himself part Maori and writing from his own slum experience, shifted the responsibilities for the lifestyle of the Maori underclass and possible solutions largely back to the Maoris themselves, which met with fierce criticism from native spokesmen and progressive nonnative readership. The novel was an instant success in New Zealand and under the direction of Lee Tamahori, also of mixed blood, quickly found its way to the screen in 1995 so as to reach a world audience. Nevertheless, given that Duff’s original screenplay was not used for the film, it should come as no surprise that novel and film tell slightly different stories. The aim of this paper is to compare the novel and its filmed version in its depiction of Maori displacement to poor urban areas, and to what extent divergent treatment of this subject matter feeds into different visions of the native predicament in New Zealand society. At the core of this analysis is the suicide of thirteen-year-old Grace and its effects on her mother, Beth, and her father, Jake. Each text embeds the Heke family within crippling discourses on race, class and gender, preparing Beth’s recovery and Jake’s downfall in its own specific way, all of which creates a narrative and discursive tension that results in the marketing of different politics, not alien to the requirements of the narrative medium chosen.

This examination of the gaps and ambiguities linked to Cantrills Filmnotes, an Australian publication on experimental film, offers a case study on the production and ownership of Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘cultural capital’ in film art at the... more

This examination of the gaps and ambiguities linked to Cantrills Filmnotes, an Australian publication on experimental film, offers a case study on the production and ownership of Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘cultural capital’ in film art at the margins, witnessed first-hand. Cantrills Filmnotes emerged at the intersection between the street and the academy, spanning that period from the 1970s until its abandonment in 2000 during which, it is argued here, it migrated from the former to the latter. This examination investigates, in retrospect, for whose benefit was the magazine’s accumulation of power, status, and prestige exercised, and in whose service was it exacted? The manifesto-like editorial rhetoric in Cantrills Filmnotes was often directed at perceived shortcomings of those institutions servicing film art in Australia. What is revealed when such a critical eye focuses on the production of Cantrills Filmnotes itself? The magazine’s cultural production has a further dimension of both taking on and taking place inside a colonial mind-set, a cultural cringe that was often the subject of editorial commentary, elucidating a practice residing at the geographic margins of a marginal arts practice. The founders and editors of Cantrills Filmnotes, the married couple Corinne and Arthur Cantrill, both suffered and benefited from the journal’s impact on this international field of art production.

To estimate the effects on health, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions if short trips (≤7 km) were undertaken by bicycle rather than motor car. Existing data sources were used to model effects, in the urban setting in New Zealand,... more

To estimate the effects on health, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions if short trips (≤7 km) were undertaken by bicycle rather than motor car. Existing data sources were used to model effects, in the urban setting in New Zealand, of varying the proportion of vehicle kilometres travelled by bicycle instead of light motor vehicle. Shifting 5% of vehicle kilometres to cycling would reduce vehicle travel by approximately 223 million kilometres each year, save about 22 million litres of fuel and reduce transport-related greenhouse emissions by 0.4%. The health effects would include about 116 deaths avoided annually as a result of increased physical activity, six fewer deaths due to local air pollution from vehicle emissions, and an additional five cyclist fatalities from road crashes. In economic terms, including only fatalities and using the NZ Ministry of Transport Value of a Statistical Life, the health effects of a 5% shift represent net savings of about $200 million per year. The health benefits of moving from cars to bikes heavily outweigh the costs of injury from road crashes. Transport policies that encourage bicycle use will help to reduce air pollution and greenhouse emissions and improve public health.

100 Tiki Notes poem, Artist Statement, and cover art and other artwork in special Pacific issue of American Quarterly, 2015, edited by Ty Tengen and Paul Lyons. A video version to in the Biomythography exhibition at Rolland Gallery at... more

100 Tiki Notes poem, Artist Statement, and cover art and other artwork in special Pacific issue of American Quarterly, 2015, edited by Ty Tengen and Paul Lyons. A video version to in the Biomythography exhibition at Rolland Gallery at Cal Lutheran in Los Angeles Fall 2015.

A brief overview of landscape in New Zealand experimental film 1970 to 2015. Includes reference to recent Maori moving image making and possible future conceptions of landscape. Abridged and updated version of... more

A brief overview of landscape in New Zealand experimental film 1970 to 2015. Includes reference to recent Maori moving image making and possible future conceptions of landscape. Abridged and updated version of an article originally published in Illusions Magazine #41. Back issues of Illusions can be ordered from PO Box 6476, Marion Square, Wellington, New Zealand.

This article examines British director Tony Richardson's international version of Ned Kelly (1970) in the context of international Australian films and the national Australian cinema. Ever since Richardson was given government assistance... more

This article examines British director Tony Richardson's international version of Ned Kelly (1970) in the context of international Australian films and the national Australian cinema. Ever since Richardson was given government assistance to produce a film about the Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, pressure to help the local industry had been mounting, especially considering that Richardson's film undercut some local productions under consideration. Outraged that a British director would be allowed to make a film about an Australian national hero when its own directors were begging for such opportunities, locals responded to Richardson and star Mick Jagger's arrival in Australia with great resentment. By looking equally at Richardson's calamitous making of the first international Kelly production, and the state of the Australian film industry, this article discusses Ned Kelly as a cautionary tale about foreigners making films about historical Australian subjects. From start to finish, Ned Kelly was a disaster, and never again would an international production be given the same concessions as were granted to Tony Richardson.