Tagged Australia on film

“Swimming”, he told her. “He wants to have a swim.” “Sailing? There’s a race on Saturday.” “I didn’t ask him. I should think he sails. He’s the sort of man who would.” She took a drink of beer. “We could tak...

After graduating from the Italian National Film School in the immediate postwar period Flavio Mogherini became one of the most esteemed and sought-after production designers and art directors of the reborn Ital...

Introduction: Tasmania and the Cinema Van Diemen’s Land (2009) Tasmania’s intermittent relationship with the cinema dates back before the first feature film made on its rugged West Coast in 1925, Louise ...

As Tom O’ Regan states in his discussion of “Unities of Setting and Landscape” in Australian National Cinema, “It is a commonplace that landscape is central to Australian culture” (1). In order to explore the f...

… Tasmanian Gothic cinema… tends to be a response to its dark and wet landscapes, which register a paradoxical sense of beauty and menace. The dramatic inclines of Tasmania’s topography, its volatile climate, t...

“If colonialism can be said to have its own origin myths, none is more powerful than the suppression of the threatening ‘other’ – the disavowed animal rival, the cannibal gnawing at the human heart.” (1) ...

“I want to talk about epic poetry.” I still remember the shock when Scott Millwood opened a documentary masterclass in the bowels of the Bondi Pavilion with these words back in 2004. I was covering the class fo...

“The only real wives I have ever had have been my sailing ships. Up front, on the prow of the Zaca, there was painted, appropriately, a rooster, a crowing cock.” - Errol Flynn (1)   This article attem...

Saturday Night Live In this new millennium, and with the first black President of the United States, it’s becoming acceptable to discuss “white people” as a distinct culture, beyond the usual referenc...

“I’m here to make a film about the end of the world... and this seems to be exactly the right place for it.” – Ava Gardner (allegedly) (1) Marguerite Duras’ 1979 short Aurélia Steiner: Melbourne, provides an i...

In the days of early film production “scenics” or “gazettes” were seminal in establishing urban film-going as “big business”. Most popular between 1903 and 1912, they coincided with the development of city film...

“Back to the city where we’re born and we die Melbourne as usual with clouds in the sky.” - from Melbourne Wedding Belle (1953) When then Premier Jeff Kennett gleefully announced that Melbourne’s municipal r...

The 23-minute film, Your House and Mine (1954) sees Robin Boyd and Peter McIntyre – two leading Australian architects of their day, whose work, language and message are still enormously important – adapt their ...

Malcolm Wallhead’s 15-minute voyeuristic essay on Melbourne city life, consumerism, and waste is plotted within the arc of a cinematic day. This structure – the musically edited rhythm of the images, the freque...

The time is 1980; the place, a crucial node on the grid of inner Melbourne, where Swanston Street, running north to south, crosses Flinders Street, running east to west. Four corners, four landmarks. Southwest...

Despite being set in an unnamed Texan city, Ghost Rider (Mark Steven Johnson, 2007) was a landmark film for Melbourne. It was the first international production to be made at the Central City (now Docklands) St...

Pomerance looks at one of Australian-born John Farrow’s least-known films, the 1953 Botany Bay, through the prism of Hollywood’s representation of the “land down-under”.

Michael Powell’s 1966 satire on Australian life-style made extensive use of Sydney locations. Collins discusses a range of cultural discourses that frame conceptions of the city, both real and imaginary.

The cinema has long been attracted to photographing great cultural icons. This article provides a thorough account of the celluloid life of one of Australia’s most distinctive landmarks.