What is a cinema? Death, closure and the database

This chapter explores the possible ontological questions and epistemological propositions that arise from detailed empirical research into cinema closures. Repeated pronouncements of the ‘Death of Cinema’ in the wake of technological, social and industrial change serve to reinforce the coincidence of ‘death’ with a type of ‘closure’. The evocation of a ‘crisis’ in the cinema is ordinarily articulated within the terms of specific cultural concerns around transience and transformation in the social experience of the cinema. However, rather than adding another chapter to the apocalyptic historiography of the cinema this paper proposes instead the constitutive importance of ‘closure’ as a critical tool for rethinking our defining assumptions about cinema(s). Specifically, the chapter will demonstrate how the conceptual granularity entailed in the development of a detailed database of venue openings and closings (the Cinema and Audiences in Australia Project database) can in turn lead to a fundamental reconsideration of the ontology of the cinema itself.

Myths and absent signifiers in representations of Aboriginal identity in Australian cinema

This article examines how meaning is always articulated in the ideological and political structures of society. This becomes apparent when evidencing articulated Aboriginal representation in Australian cinema, which signifies a representation on screen expressive of the ideological and political structures of the historical time periods in which the films were produced. Meaning, which is the relationship between the signifier and its signified, includes both denotation and connotation. Specific connotators can load a sign with multiple meanings leading to a chain of connotations.  The connotations of Aboriginal identity in Australian filmic narratives are influenced by a chain of additional signified, those of: socio-cultural variables and dominant discourses. This article analyses these chains of connotations through an examination of myths and absent signifiers in filmic representations of Aboriginal identity. The films investigated are: Jedda (Charles Chauvel 1955), Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg 1971), Night Cries (Tracey Moffatt 1990) and Rabbit Proof Fence (Philip Noyce 2002).

Film, representation and the exclusion of Aboriginal identity: examples from Australian cinema

Throughout the latter half of the past century cinema has played a significant role in the shaping of the core narratives of Australia. Films express and implicitly shape national images and symbolic representations of cultural fictions in which ideas about Indigenous identity have been embedded. In this paper, exclusionary practices in Australian narratives are analysed through examples of films representing Aboriginal identity. Through these filmic narratives the articulation, interrogation, and contestation of views about filmic representations of Aboriginal identity in Australia is illuminated. The various themes in the filmic narratives are examined in order to compare and contrast the ways in which the films display the operation of narrative closure and dualisms within the film texts.

Defacing the acquisitions: a museal-analysis of serial killing horror in cinema

Explores the relationship between serial killing and affect as a form of cinematic horror that repositions the viewer away from the logic of reason through a dismantling of subjectivity via 'modifications' to the body. The chapter has a particular attention to the representation of serial killing in the museum space - theoretically a locus of modern rationality and order- to argue that the museum can be philsophically understood as functioning to detatch desire from subjective formation and fixed encoding of identies. The chapter draws on philosopher Gilles Deleuze and theorists Anna Powell and Steven Shaviro.

Missing the lesbian and the missing lesbian: a study of the forgotten lesbian in 1970s Australian cinema

This paper addresses the (largely forgotten) presence of lesbians, in 1970s Australian film. It explores the romantic friendships canvassed in 'Picnic at Hanging Rock', (Peter Weir, 1975) and 'The Getting of Wisdom', (Bruce Beresford, 1977) alongside the lesbian in other canonical 1970s works, like the election comedy, 'Don’s Party' (Beresford, 1976) the bio-pic 'Dawn!', and unique tele-features such as 'The Alternative' (Paul Eddy 1978). This paper investigates the way these texts are read and received. The 1970s was an important decade in Australia's filmic history, (affectionately dubbed Australia's film ‘Renaissance’) and this paper examine the lesbian readings that are and aren’t there; and that are and are not avowed.