Key Moments in Australian Cinema
“You and the earth, Cathy. That’s all I want.” Sons of Matthew (Charles Chauvel, 1949)
Sons of Matthew was unquestionably Charles Chauvel’s most polished and assured effort to that point, despite a notoriously arduous production period that saw cast and
Marbuk Struts His Stuff: Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955)
“You silly lubras. All the time you talk about this new boy Marbuk. He’s the same as any other boy.” - Jedda (Ngarla Kunoth) to
“A pointed condemnation of an effete Western society”: The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Bruce Beresford, 1972)
Contemporary Australian cinema has lost any sense of spontaneity or carnivalesque excess in the prison house of worthiness and realism. Aside from genre films, there
Chicks Don’t Surf: Puberty Blues (Bruce Beresford, 1981)
The penultimate scene in Puberty Blues is for most viewers including this writer, the defining moment in the film. Over the course of the narrative,
Bubby’s Cosmic Moment: Bad Boy Bubby (Rolf de Heer, 1993)
The annals of world cinema contain their share of anti-clericalism, atheism, and blasphemy. Yet the Australian film Bad Boy Bubby, directed by Rolf de Heerand
Performance Anxiety: Shine (Scott Hicks, 1996)
Australian cinema rarely embraces the bold, hyperbolic flourish of full-blown melodrama; our family melodramas tend to remain grounded in a realist aesthetic (1). As one
“It’s tangled”: Lantana (Ray Lawrence, 2001)
Ray Lawrence’s Lantana is a multi-strand narrative drawing four couples into a web of love, deceit, sex and death.This film adaptation of Andrew Bovell’s play,
The Camera in the Iron Helmet: Ned Kelly (Gregor Jordan, 2003)
Mark Juddery has claimed that, without film, Edward “Ned”Kelly could not be the national icon he is today (1). When viewing Kelly’s cinematic legacy, it