Shining a Light: 50 Years of the Australian Film Institute

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.

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

While recent scholarship demonstrates a significant increase in the level of interest in Australian film music, very little attention has been focused on the soundtracks of contemporary Australian landscape cinema — including films that explore the contentious aspects of Australia’s colonial legacy. This thesis is intended to respond to this research gap, in particular by employing textual and production analysis methodologies to track cultural identifications and representations within four recent landscape films. The films are Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Proposition, Australia and Samson & Delilah; and I look specifically at their sonic dimensions — namely, the amalgam of score, dialogue and sound effects. The study explores the particular aesthetics and ideologies of the soundtracks; it is concerned with codification and how the soundtracks amplify — consciously and subconsciously — new and oppositional insights with respect to contemporary understandings of Australian identity and landscape. The study also argues that the soundtracks are powerful modes of expression and, as such, are themselves engaged in contemporary debates surrounding Australian history such as the ‘history wars’, ‘Mabo’ decision and the Bringing Them Home report. Unlike other important studies on Australian cinema and more specifically Australian landscape cinema, my research suggests that attending to the hitherto neglected soundtrack may present an opportunity not only for achieving a more comprehensive film criticism but also for extending the ways we address Australia’s past. Such a project, focusing on the sonic dimension, may also prove to be of fundamental significance to our present-day challenge of securing a more productive social and psychological engagement with Aboriginal Australia.

Conference co-convened with Fincina Hopgood and Patricia di Risio at the University of Melbourne focussing on empathy and the portrayal of mental illness on screen.

Journal of British Cinema and Television

For over 30 years Channel 4 has supported more than 400 feature films through its production arm, Film4. However, despite the scale and variety of this contribution to British cinema, only a handful of these productions are regularly cited in print media and academic texts as being representative of the Film4 catalogue and/or influential in British film culture generally. This article will look at the creation of top films lists as a case of canon formation, and the ways in which the Film4 canon in particular continues to be shaped and contested, not only by critics, academics and cultural institutions, but by Channel 4 itself. It draws upon the work of Janet Staiger (1985) on canon formation and of Joseph Lampel and Shivasharan Nadavulakere (2009) on retrospective consecration in order to consider the processes by which certain films are more likely to appear in critics' best films lists. Bearing in mind that the brand identity of Film4 depends also on Channel 4's own promotional activities, the article will go on to examine two case studies of Film4 anniversary seasons in order to assess the part that scheduling plays in constructing the channel's own representations of its contribution to British cinema. Finally, after exploring some of the reasons why certain films are remembered (and why others are forgotten), attention will turn to the ways in which certain forgotten films can be re-presented in DVD and video-on-demand markets. This reveals the extent to which commercial factors are also determinants in the processes of canon formation and can impinge upon the attribution of cultural value.