The Cinema of Australia and New Zealand

The Cinema of Australia and New Zealand
Author: Geoff Mayer
Publisher: Wallflower Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2007
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781904764960

From The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906 to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Australia and New Zealand have made a unique impact on international cinema. This book celebrates the commercially successful narrative feature films produced by these cultures as well as key documentaries, shorts, and independent films. It also invokes issues involving national identity, race, history, and the ability of two small film cultures to survive the economic and cultural threat of Hollywood. Chapters on well known films and directors, such as The Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982), The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993), Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001), and Rabbit Proof Fence (Philip Noyce, 2002), are included with less popular but equally important films and filmmakers, such as Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955), They're a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966), Vigil (Vincent Ward, 1984), and The Goddess of 1967 (Clara Law, 2000).

Historical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Cinema

Historical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Cinema
Author: Karina Aveyard
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2017-12-26
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1538111276

Filmmakers have honed their skills and many have achieved critical and popular success at home and abroad, as have actors and other crew. American filmmakers and companies have found it cheaper to make films in Australia because wages and salaries are lower, tax rebates have been attractive and the expertise in most areas of filmmaking is comparable to that of anywhere in the world. At the same time, Australian audiences still enjoy watching Australian films, making some of them profitable, even if this is a small profit when considered in Hollywood terms. New Zealand filmmakers, cast and crew have shown that they are equal to the world’s best in making films with international themes, while other films have shown that the world is interested in New Zealand narratives and settings. Increased support for Maori filmmakers and stories has had a significant impact on production levels and on the diversity of stories that now reach the screen. It has also helped create more viable career paths for those who continue to be based in their home country. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Cinema contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on leading films as well as many directors, writers, actors and producers. It also covers early pioneers, film companies, genres and government bodies.

Contemporary New Zealand Cinema

Contemporary New Zealand Cinema
Author: Ian Conrich
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2008-09-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781845118372

Since New Zealand Cinema burst on to the global stage in the late 1970s, it has maintained a high-profile presence, capturing the imagination and enthusiasm of both national and international audiences, through such films as Vigil, Whale Rider and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Contemporary New Zealand Cinema provides an astute and definitive analysis of this fascinating industry. Focusing on industrial and commercial concerns, questions of aesthetics and form, and the cultural debates surrounding nation and identity, the book surveys the full range of filmmaking in New Zealand. It displays the rich diversity of film production in the country, and in doing so highlights a number of specific contexts - Maori, documentary and short filmmaking, literary adaptations, the development of the national Film Commission and Archive, marketing and censorship, in addition to explorations into the place of bicultural relations, spirituality, masculinity and disability - that have created a cinema of global significance. Featuring critical accounts of internationally-acclaimed features like The Piano and Once Were Warriors, as well as the growth of the national infrastructure that made such films possible, Contemporary New Zealand Cinema is the most thorough study available of a vibrant filmmaking culture. The book also includes a fully comprehensive filmography detailing all New Zealand feature and television films.

The A to Z of Australian and New Zealand Cinema

The A to Z of Australian and New Zealand Cinema
Author: Albert Moran
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2009-07-21
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0810863472

Whether it was Jane Campion's The Piano, Mel Gibson in Mad Max, Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee, or The Lord of the Rings saga, we have all experienced the cinema of Australia and New Zealand. This book is an introduction and guide to the film of Australia and New Zealand. With entries on many exceptional producers, directors, writers and actors, as well as the films indicated above and many others, this reference also presents the early pioneers, the film companies and government bodies, and much more in its hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries. Through a chronology that shows how far these cinemas have come in a short time and an introduction that presents them more broadly, a clear portrait of the two countries' motion pictures emerge. The bibliography is an excellent source for further reading.

Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand

Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand
Author: Ben Goldsmith
Publisher: Intellect Books
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2010-12-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1841503428

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.

Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand 2

Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand 2
Author: Ben Goldsmith
Publisher: Intellect Books
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2015-04-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1783204818

Building on and bringing up to date the material presented in the first instalment of Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand, this volume continues the exploration of the cinema produced in Australia and New Zealand since the beginning of the twentieth century. Among the additions to this volume are in-depth treatments of the locations that feature prominently in the countries’ cinema. Essays by leading critics and film scholars consider the significance of the outback and the beach in films, which are evoked as a liminal space in Long Weekend and a symbol of death in Heaven’s Burning, among other films. Other contributions turn the spotlight on previously unexplored genres and key filmmakers, including Jane Campion, Rolf de Heer, Charles Chauvel and Gillian Armstrong. Accompanying the critical essays in this volume are more than one hundred and fifty new film reviews, complemented by film stills and significantly expanded references for further study. From The Piano to Crocodile Dundee, Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand 2 completes this comprehensive treatment of a consistently fascinating national cinema.

The Film Cultures Reader

The Film Cultures Reader
Author: Graeme Turner
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 550
Release: 2002
Genre: Motion pictures
ISBN: 0415252814

This companion reader to Film as Social Practice brings together key writings on contemporary cinema, exploring film as a social and cultural phenomenon.

Making Settler Cinemas

Making Settler Cinemas
Author: P. Limbrick
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2010-06-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230107915

Through a shrewd analysis of the historical experience of imperialism and settler colonialism, Limbrick draws new conclusions about their effect on cinematic production, distribution, reception and filmic discourse.

Australian Genre Film

Australian Genre Film
Author: Kelly McWilliam
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2021-04-26
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 042988981X

Australian Genre Film interrogates key genres at the core of Australia’s so-called new golden age of genre cinema, establishing the foundation on which more sustained research on film genre in Australian cinema can develop. The book examines what characterises Australian cinema and its output in this new golden age, as contributors ask to what extent Australian genre film draws on widely understood (and largely Hollywood-based) conventions, as compared to culturally specific conventions of genre storytelling. As such, this book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of Australian genre film, undertaken through original analyses of 13 significant Australian genres: action, biopics, comedy, crime, horror, musical, road movie, romance, science fiction, teen, thriller, war, and the Western. This book will be a cornerstone work for the burgeoning field of Australian film genre studies and a must-read for academics; researchers; undergraduate students; postgraduate students; and general readers interested in film studies, media studies, cultural studies, Australian studies, and sociology.

Australian National Cinema

Australian National Cinema
Author: Tom O'Regan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2005-08-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1134933487

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.