Tagged: Australian Cinema
Review – High Ground (2020)
Director: Stephen Johnson
Starring: Jacob Junior Nayinggul, Simon Baker, Callan Mulvey, Jack Thompson, Sean Mununggurr, Caren Pistorius, Ryan Corr, Witiyana Marika, Esmerelda Marimowa
The last decade and a half has witnessed a pronounced shift in Indigenous screen narratives, moving away from traditionally hard-hitting social-realist dramas towards the embracing of genre. One of the most interesting aspects of this shift has been the embracing of the Western. Through films like Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country and Ivan Sen’s Mystery Road,this classical genre, traditionally the site of nation-building mythologising, has been co-opted to serve as a site of cultural reckoning, negotiating the unresolved traumas of Australia’s colonialist history. While High Ground director Stephen Johnson is not himself an indigenous man, he has had a long career working with Indigenous creatives, and his long awaited sophomore film, produced by former Yothu Yindi member Witiyana Marika and made in consultation with the local Indigenous clans, continues this genre subversion.
Continue readingReview – Rams (2020)
Director: Jeremy Sims
Starring: Sam Neill, Michael Caton, Miranda Richardson, Asher Keddie, Wayne Blair, Leon Ford
Who would have thought that a remake of a quirky Icelandic film about shepherds could end up being the film to best encapsulate the experience of 2020 in Australia? With Rams, a remake of Grimur Hakonarson’s 2015 film Hrútar (which is Icelandic for ‘Rams’), screenwriter Jules Duncan and director Jeremy Sims have managed to not only make the story feel organically of this place, but also very much of this time.
Continue readingReview – Top End Wedding (2019)
Director: Wayne Blair
Starring: Miranda Tapsell, Gwilym Lee, Kerry Fox, Huw Higginson, Shari Sebbens, Elaine Crombie, Dalara Williams, Ursula Yovich
After decades of being excluded or pushed to the periphery of Australian cinema, it is fair to say that in the last decade Indigenous filmmakers have been responsible for much of the most interesting Australian screen product. In addition to the emergence of a golden generation of indigenous filmmakers, an important element of this rise in prominence is what Therese Davis described as the conscious ‘mainstreaming’ of indigenous cinema. Over the last decade, Indigenous screen storytelling has moved away from hard-hitting social realism to embrace genre as a means of exploring Indigenous themes and narratives. We have seen successful musicals (The Sapphires and Bran Nue Dae), westerns (Sweet Country) and crime dramas (Mystery Road and Goldstone), but Wayne Blair’s Top End Wedding might be the first indigenous romantic comedy. Continue reading
Review – Sweet Country (2017)
Director: Warwick Thornton
Starring: Hamilton Morris, Bryan Brown, Natassia Gorey Furber, Sam Neill, Ewan Leslie, Tremayne Doolan, Trevon Doolan, Gibson John, Matt Day
The western has long proven a source of fascination for Australian filmmakers. While seemingly the most American of genres, there are obvious elements of shared experience which attract Australian storytellers to the form. It is a genre of landscape, of wide open spaces, which Australia has in spades. It is also a genre of colonisation, of nation building at the expense of an existing indigenous population, a dark history that Australia and America share. Eight years after earning critical acclaim, and the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Camera d’Or, for his debut feature Samson & Delilah, Warwick Thornton has dipped his toe into the western with Sweet Country, bringing an indigenous perspective to the form. Continue reading
Doctor of Movies’ Top Ten of 2018
Review – Terror Nullius (2018)
Director: Soda_Jerk
Starring: Anyone and everyone from the history of Australian cinema and politics
In the 1920s, Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov conducted a series of experiments in which the same image of a neutral male face was screened alongside different images. A bowl of soup. A child in a coffin. A reclining woman. In each instance the audience interpreted the neutral expression in a different way. The man was hungry. He was sad. He was lustful. From these experiments came one of the foundational principles of cinematic language: the meaning of shots was not static, but changed based on how those shots were arranged. This principle of meaning creation, and in particular recreation, through juxtaposition is used to startling effect in the explosive mashup piece Terror Nullius. Continue reading
Review – We Don’t Need a Map (2017)
Director: Warwick Thornton
Starring: Warwick Thornton
In 2010, riding high on the success of his debut feature Samson & Delilah, Aboriginal filmmaker Warwick Thornton found himself in hot water when he suggested that the Southern Cross was fast becoming Australia’s equivalent to the swastika. His new documentary, We Don’t Need a Map, which opened this year’s Sydney Film Festival, is his effort to explain those remarks by delving into the historical meaning of the Southern Cross. We Don’t Need a Map is one of four films funded by NITV (National Indigenous Television) as part of the ‘Moment in History’ initiative to mark fifty years since the 1967 referendum which saw Aboriginal people officially recognised as part of Australia’s population. Continue reading
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