The Australian screen producer: Understanding screen production cultures in a period of industrial transition [Abstract]

The screen producer plays a vital role in shaping the creative, commercial and entrepreneurial dimensions of production. And yet Australian film history is most often presented as an appreciation of film directors or an examination of industrial governance measures. On the other hand, public funding agencies in Australia have, for the most part, supported independent film and television production as a producer-led, or producer-as-auteur production system, and as such the producer has played a critical role in shaping the broader independent production landscape. In recent years, fundamental changes to distribution and consumption practices have had a major impact on the nature of screen production. Screen producers are increasingly migrating into emerging online, transmedia and cross-media production; generating both opportunities and challenges for traditional producers. However, the production cultures and motivations of producers operating in these emergent spaces remain poorly understood. This presentation will focus on the largely unremarked role of the producer in Australian screen scholarship. It will explore the ways in which the practice of screen producing is evolving and the migratory pathways of traditional producers moving into digital/new media production. The presentation’s primary findings are drawn from the 2011 Australian Screen Producer Survey; a national study of the activities of Australian screen producers conducted by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), Queensland University of Technology, with support from the Centre for Screen Business /Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). From longitudinal analysis, the presentation will compare and contrast data from the 2009 and 2011 survey across film, television, corporate production and new media industry segments. In so doing the presentation will delineate the practices, attitudes, strategies, and aspirations of screen producers operating in a convergent digital media marketplace and suggest ways forward for a more industrially cognisant approach to screen history.

Australian Aboriginal words in English : their origin and meaning [Second edition]

Australian Aboriginal Words in English records the Aboriginal contribution to Australian English and provides a fascinating insight into the contact between the first Australians and European settlers. The words are grouped according to subject, and for each one there is information on the Aboriginal language from which it derives, the date of its first written use in English, and its present meaning and pronunciation. This book brings them together and provides the fullest available information about their Aboriginal background and their Australian English History.

Australian Aboriginal Words in English : their Origin and Meaning [First edition]

This extensive reference provides authoritative information about the history of over 400 words from Aboriginal languages, offering the fullest available information about their Aboriginal background and Australian English history. The book begins with a general history of the 250 Australian aboriginal languages, including profiles of the languages that have been most significant as sources for borrowing. The words are then grouped according to subject: birds, fish, edible flora, dwellings, etc., with each work listed in a dictionary-style entry. The book concludes by addressing how words changed in English, and discusses English words that have since been adopted into Aboriginal languages.

Review : "Not Quite Hollywood" -- Mark Hartley

Synopsis and review of the Australian documentary Not Quite Hollywood (Mark Hartley, 2008). Not Quite Hollywood might just as accurately have been titled Not Quite Australian Cinema. The film begins from the premise that the vast range of films it covers have been unduly overlooked by critics, historians and scholars of the Australian cinema despite often enormous box office success. Much of the blame for the marginalisation of these films is placed at the feet of former Sydney Film Festival director and long-time film critic for The Australian newspaper David Stratton, well-known to Australian audiences as one half of the ‘David and Margaret’ couple who have dominated film reviewing on Australian television for many years. Stratton’s books on the Australian film revival The Last New Wave (1980) and The Avocado Plantation (1990) are said to have set the tone for later writers by reviling or simply ignoring many of the films produced in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s in favour of a canon of films and directors deemed more culturally and artistically worthy. Perhaps predictably, Not Quite Hollywood swings the other way. The back-slapping, anecdotal, revisionist history told through the many interviews with key figures from the time is only occasionally interrupted by Bob Ellis and Phillip Adams, who are only slightly uncomfortably cast as defenders of the mainstream views. The interviews and clips from the films are interspersed with the fan-boy enthusiasms of Quentin Tarantino whose geek-chic profile and encyclopaedic knowledge of exploitation and genre cinema are milked to the full. In sharp contrast, Ellis’s scorn for these filmmakers and their films is total, but it is his withering and slanderous assessments of the characters, talents and practices of producers like Antony I Ginnane and John Lamond that leavens this sometimes stodgy stew of selfcongratulation...

Former Archbishop of York ‘covered up’ sex abuse scandal

The former Archbishop of York stood accused last night of covering up allegations that a senior Church of England clergyman had abused choirboys and school pupils. Lord Hope of Thornes was made aware of the accusations against the Very Rev Robert Waddington, a former Dean of Manchester Cathedral and once the cleric in overall charge of Church schools, in 1999 and again in 2003. Waddington was stripped of his right to conduct church services but the archbishop did not report concerns about alleged past abuse or a potential continuing threat to children to police or child protection agencies. The extent of Waddington’s alleged history of abuse and the Church’s inaction has been revealed through a joint investigation by The Times and The Australian newspaper in Sydney.

Indigenous Australian women and work : an historical context

The aim of this on-going research is to interrogate the era of colonialism in Australia (1896-1966) and the denial of paid employment of Aboriginal women. The 1897 Aborigines Protection and the Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act witnessed thousands of Aboriginal people placed on Government run reserves and missions. This resulted in all aspects of their lives being controlled through state mechanisms. Under various Acts of Parliament, Aboriginal women were sent to privately owned properties to be utilised as ‘domestic servants’ through a system of forced indentured labour, which continued until the 1970’s. This paper discusses the hidden histories of these women through the use of primary sources documents including records from the Australian Department of Native Affairs and Department of Home and Health. This social history research reveals that the practice of removing Aboriginal women from their families at the age of 12 or 13 and to white families was more common practice than not. These women were often: not paid, worked up to 15 hour days, not allowed leave and subjected to many forms of abuse. Wages that were meant to be paid were re-directed to other others, including the Government. Whilst the retrieval of these ‘stolen wages’ is now an on-going issue resulting in the Queensland Government in 2002 offering AUS $2,000 to $4,000 in compensation for a lifetime of work, Aboriginal women were also asked to waive their legal right to further compensation. There are few documented histories of these Aboriginal women as told through the archives. This hidden Aboriginal Australian women’s history needs to be revealed to better understand the experiences and depth of misappropriation of Aboriginal women as domestic workers. In doing so, it also reveals a more accurate reflection of women’s work in Australia.

How do Australian print media representations of child abuse and neglect inform the public and system reform?

The print media play a vital role in informing the public about child abuse and neglect. This information helps build broad support for laws and system developments that enable the state to intervene into private family lives and ensure that children are protected from maltreatment. Print media coverage usually sets the daily media agenda. It therefore influences public understandings of child abuse and neglect and what people believe should be done about it. Media impact on policy agendas should not be underestimated. This article outlines the results of a study of all major Australian newspaper stories covering abuse and neglect matters during an 18-month period in 2008–2009. A range of issues are identified concerning how well these stories inform the public about the nature of the problem and the current national reform agenda for protective systems that promotes early intervention and prevention...

Crossing lines: Sport history, transformative narratives, and Aboriginal Australia

In this collaborative article, we seek to unsettle the dominance of Western, reconstructionist accounts of Indigenous Australian sport history through reflections on our past research in the Queensland Aboriginal community of Cherbourg. That research focussed on a statue of legendary 1930s cricketer, Eddie Gilbert, and on sport exhibitions in Cherbourg's Ration Shed Museum. Here, we are less concerned with unveiling the ‘true’ account of Australian Aboriginal sporting history, or even a ‘true’ Indigenous representation of events. Rather, we are interested in analysing various perspectives in order to generate a more inclusive and complete account of Aboriginal sport history and the narrative implications of these for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. Central to this endeavour is the positioning of Indigenous knowledge and understanding at the centre of history-making. The article is in two sections: reflections on our past work from the perspectives of the researchers themselves and an Aboriginal academic colleague, followed by a discussion of how those experiences and reflections will inform our pending project on the 1950s and 1960s Cherbourg marching girls teams.

Disciplining the screen through education: The Royal Commission into the moving picture industry in Australia

In this article, we investigate the complex relationship between concerns about children and young people’s exposure to cinema in 1920s Australia and the use of film in education. In part, the Royal Commission into the Moving Picture Industry in Australia aimed to ‘ascertain the effect and the extent of the power of film upon juveniles’ and Commissioners spoke to educationalists, psychologists, medical professions, police officers and parents to gain insight into the impacts of movies on children. Numerous issues were canvassed in the Commission hearings such as exposure to sexual content, ‘excesses’ in film content, children’s inability to concentrate at school following cinema attendance and the influence of cinema on youth crime. While the Commission ultimately suggested it was parents’ role to police children’s engagements with cinema, it did make recommendations for restricting children’s access to films with inappropriate themes. Meanwhile, the Commission was very positive about film’s educational role stating that ‘the advantage to be gained by the use of the cinematograph as an adjunct to educational methods should be assisted in every possible way by the Commonwealth’. We draw on the Commission’s minutes of evidence, the Commission report and newspaper articles form the 1920s to the 1940s to argue that the Commission provides valuable insight into the beginnings of the use of screen content in formal schooling, both as a resource across the curriculum and as a specific focus of education through film appreciation and, later, broader forms of media education. The article argues debates about screen entertainment and education rehearsed in the Commission are reflected today as parents, concerned citizens and educators ponder the dangers and potential of new media technologies and media content used by children and young people such as video games, social media and interactive content.

Book Review "Selling sex: a hidden history of prostitution", R. Frances, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2007

In the opening pages of Selling Sex we are introduced to 'Joy', a statue of a young female sex worker which stood in East Sydney for eighteen months during 1995- 1997. Following complaints by local residents, the statue was removed from public view and returned to its owner. Evidently, Joy was considered a reminder of the community's 'bad old days', when it was better known for prostitution than restaurants. In a nation in which almost every sizable community has proudly erected monuments to military men, the removal of Joy reveals much about labour and gender relations in Australia. For Frances, the removal of Joy is symbolic, our historical treatment of sex workers having parallels with our treatment of the convicts. This work sets out to give these women (male prostitutes do not figure in this history) a voice and break with the stereotypes of 'abandoned whores' or 'sad victims'. It also sets out to place the sex industry in the broader national and international context in which it has historically operated...

Industrial playwriting : forms, strategies, and methods for creative production

This study, in its exploration of the attached play scripts and their method of development, evaluates the forms, strategies, and methods of an organised model of formalised playwriting. Through the examination, reflection and reaction to a perceived crisis in playwriting in the Australian theatre sector, the notion of Industrial Playwriting is arrived at: a practice whereby plays are designed and constructed, and where the process of writing becomes central to the efficient creation of new work and the improvement of the writer’s skill and knowledge base. Using a practice-led methodology and action research the study examines a system of play construction appropriate to and addressing the challenges of the contemporary Australian theatre sector. Specifically, using the action research methodology known as design-based research a conceptual framework was constructed to form the basis of the notion of Industrial Playwriting. From this two plays were constructed using a case study method and the process recorded and used to create a practical, step-by-step system of Industrial Playwriting. In the creative practice of manufacturing a single authored play, and then a group-devised play, Industrial Playwriting was tested and found to also offer a valid alternative approach to playwriting in the training of new and even emerging playwrights. Finally, it offered insight into how Industrial Playwriting could be used to greatly facilitate theatre companies’ ongoing need to have access to new writers and new Australian works, and how it might form the basis of a cost effective writer development model. This study of the methods of formalised writing as a means to confront some of the challenges of the Australian theatre sector, the practice of playwriting and the history associated with it, makes an original and important contribution to contemporary playwriting practice.

Building an effective trade practices commission : the role of Professor Robert Baxt AO

Bob Baxt, the third Chairman of the Trade Practices Commission, served for a single three year term from 1988 to 1991. He followed Bob McComas, who had deliberately adopted a non-litigious approach to preserving the competitive process, believing that he understood business as an insider and that much of what it did was not anti-competitive, when correctly viewed. Baxt was far more pro-active in his approach, and more closely aligned with that of the first Chairman, Ron Bannerman. Baxt sought to push the frontiers of investigation and precedent, and perhaps, more significantly, sought to influence his Ministers, the government, public servants and public opinion about the need to expand the coverage of the Trade Practices Act, increase penalties and properly resource the Commission so that it could perform its assigned roles. This article examines Baxt’s early and on-going role in teaching Australian students and professionals through his interdisciplinary Trade Practices Workshops, the political context of Baxt’s tenure, including his relations with the Attorney-General ,Michael Duffy, and his skilful handling of the Queensland Wire case.

Between Two Worlds : Harry Reade, the Sydney waterfront and Cuban animation

Harry Reade (1927-1998) was an Australian waterside worker-artist who became involved with animation production through the Waterside Workers’ Federation Film Unit, in Sydney. During the early years of the Cuban Revolution, Reade contributed to Cuba’s social and cultural reform process by influencing the development of the educational sector of Cuban animation. This article examines the forces that shaped Reade and the ways in which he contributed to the use of animation as an agent of social change.