The Australian Film Revival

The Australian Film Revival: 70s, 80s, and Beyond explores the matrix of forces – artistic, cultural, economic, political, governmental, and ideological – that gave rise to, shaped, and sustained this remarkable film movement. This engaging new study brings fresh perspectives, insights, and innovative approaches to a variety of films from a diversity of filmmakers. Areas of focus include the complex and contentious subjects of masculinity, femininity and feminism, the maternal, as well as the Indigenous road film and the protean Australian gothic. During the formative years of the revival, Australian films seemed to emerge from out of the blue in terms of global film history, with many features including Picnic at Hanging Rock (l975), Caddie (l976), The Last Wave (l977), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (l978), and My Brilliant Career (l979) receiving international distribution and enthusiastic critical acclaim with strong box office results. By the time the film revival was in full swing, not only did Australian audiences flock to theaters to see “homegrown” films, but the quantity of Australian films on overseas screens was so high that ardent critics declared this outpouring an Australian “New Wave.” The eyes of the world had turned to a compelling and largely unknown culture.

The Australian Film Revival: 70s, 80s, and Beyond explores the matrix of forces – artistic, cultural, economic, political, governmental, and ideological – that gave rise to, shaped, and sustained this remarkable film movement. This engaging new study brings fresh perspectives, insights, and innovative approaches to a variety of films from a diversity of filmmakers. Areas of focus include the complex and contentious subjects of masculinity, femininity and feminism, the maternal, as well as the Indigenous road film and the protean Australian gothic. During the formative years of the revival, Australian films seemed to emerge from out of the blue in terms of global film history, with many features including Picnic at Hanging Rock (l975), Caddie (l976), The Last Wave (l977), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (l978), and My Brilliant Career (l979) receiving international distribution and enthusiastic critical acclaim with strong box office results. By the time the film revival was in full swing, not only did Australian audiences flock to theaters to see “homegrown” films, but the quantity of Australian films on overseas screens was so high that ardent critics declared this outpouring an Australian “New Wave.” The eyes of the world had turned to a compelling and largely unknown culture.

Looks at the growth of mass air tourism and the consequent increase in greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft. The effects on cities such as Venice, subject to frequent flooding, and the climate of Europe and Africa could become much worse as new airline markets such as India and China continue to expand.

The institutions and products of the Australian film industry have been extensively surveyed, yet few analyses consider the sources of the film revival that took place in the 1970s and 1980s. This book represents a body of thinking about Australian cinema that asks where the origins of films lie. The book begins by tracing the indebtedness of Australian cinema to the classical narrative style of Hollywood film-making, with its firm grasp of melodrama. It continues by comparing the problems faced by the 'high' British cinema of the 1940s and 1950s with those faced by Australia in the 1970s and 1980s in the attempts by both countries to establish national film industries. New Australian Cinema will increase the scope of the discussion about the revival of Australian cinema and help us to make cultural sense of the films themselves.

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.

This addition to Intellect's Directory of World Cinema series turns the spotlight on Australia and New Zealand and offers an in-depth and exciting look at the cinema produced in these two countries since the turn of the twentieth century. Though the two nations share considerable cultural and economic connections, their film industries remain distinct, marked by differences of scale, level of government involvement and funding and relations with other countries and national cinemas. Through essays about prominent genres and themes, profiles of directors and comprehensive reviews of significant titles, this user-friendly guide explores the diversity and distinctiveness of films from Australia and New Zealand from Whale Rider to The Piano to Wolf Creek.

To date, there has been little sustained attention given to the historical cinema relations between Australia and Asia. This is a significant omission given Australia’s geo-political position and the place Asia has held in the national imaginary, oscillating between threat and opportunity. Many accounts of Australian cinema begin with the 1970s film revival, placing “Asian Australian cinema” within a post-revival schema of multicultural or diasporic cinema and ignoring Asian Australian connections prior to the revival. Transnational Australian Cinema charts a history of Asian Australian cinema, encompassing the work of diasporic Asian filmmakers, films featuring images of Asia and Asians, films produced by Australians working in Asia’s film industries or addressed at Asian audiences, and Asian films that use Australian resources, including locations and personnel. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the book considers diasporic Asian histories, the impact of government immigration and film policies on representation, and the new aesthetic styles and production regimes created by filmmakers who have forged links, both through roots and routes, with Asia. This expanded history of Asian Australian cinema allows for a renewed discussion of so called dormant periods in the nation’s film history. In this respect, the mapping of an expanded history of cinema practices contributes to our broader aim to rethink the transnationalism of Australian cinema.