Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009) Helen Goritsas March 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema “Don’t run after poetry. It penetrates unaided through the joins.” - Robert Bresson (1) Throughout human history from Euripides to J. K. Rowling the...
The Hunt: Wake in Fright (Ted Kotcheff, 1971) Andrew McCallum March 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Producers’ Note: Photography of the hunting scenes in this film took place during an actual kangaroo hunt conducted by licensed professional hunters. ...
One Night the Moon (Rachel Perkins, 2001) Georgina Wills March 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema In Rachel Perkins’ musical One Night the Moon the convention of the duet typical of the classical Hollywood musical is reconfigured. In the film, ther...
Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton, 2009) Tess Fisher March 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Silence. Punctuated by the insistent ringing of a public phone. Ringing. Ringing. Ringing. Unanswered. This leitmotif in Warwick Thornton’s Sam...
The Girlfriends (Peter Elliot, 1967) Geoff Gardner March 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Way back in 2003, Nigel Buesst did a solitary excavation of Melbourne filmmaking during the 1950s and ’60s. Those years were characterised by what see...
Return Home (Ray Argall, 1990) Adrian Danks March 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema The history of Australian cinema is littered with small-scale, unobtrusive and even intimate portraits of working and middle class life that are large...
“She Invited Herself”: Sunday Too Far Away (Ken Hannam, 1975) Wes Felton February 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema “Friday night too tired; Saturday night too drunk; Sunday, too far away.” – “The Shearer’s Wife’s Lament” Sunday Too Far Away is a film that never q...
Living for the Moment: Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (Mark Hartley, 2008) Martyn Bamber February 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema “If you like outrageous cinema, you live and breathe to wait for those weird moments that happen every once in a while in genre cinema, where it’s lik...
Moving Out (Michael Pattinson, 1983) Peter Hourigan February 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema In a rundown school, a science-teacher, Mr Clarke (Ivar Kants), is at least able to keep trouble at bay in his class of bored, disengaged teenaged boy...
Aural Association and Sensory Affect in Snowtown (Justin Kurzel, 2011) Tara Judah February 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Almost as extraordinary as Justin Kurzel’s feature film debut, Snowtown, about the 1999 “Bodies in Barrels” murders, is the often-baulking reception w...
A Star Revealed as Oceania’s Persistent Film Clichés Bite the Dust: A Look Back at the First Scene in Romper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright, 1992) Inge Fossen February 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Where does one begin a piece on Russell Crowe, Oceania’s most precocious and visible film export after Nicole Kidman? Which scene or what image first ...
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975) Darragh O’Donoghue February 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema The opening frames of Peter Weir’s film contrast the natural permanence of Hanging Rock with the man-made elevation of Appleyard College. This has led...
