Noir and the urban imaginary

Noir and the Urban Imaginary is creative practice based PhD research comprising critical analysis (40%) exegesis (10%) and a twenty-six minute film, The Brisbane Line (50%). The research investigates intersection of four elements; the city, the cinema, history and postmodernity. The thesis discusses relationships between each of the four elements and what cinematic representation of cities reveals about modern and postmodern urban experience and historicisation. Key concepts in the research include, 'urbanism', 'historiography', 'modernity', 'postmodernity', 'neo-noir'.

Triple Helix: Film Noir, Neo Noir and Los Angeles – imagining history and remembering the future in the most contemporary city

Modern and Postmodern Los Angeles is examined through the lens of film noir and neo noir. The unique relationship between the city of Los Angeles and cinema is discussed in terms of a historiography emphasizing the role played by these defining film styles and genres. The research draws and extends on the work conducted by Edward Dimendberg, Paula Rabinowitz and Mike Davis, and urban theory approaches associated with the Los Angeles School of Urbanism.

Open City, Rossellini and neorealism : sixty years on

For Bakhtin, it is always important to know from where one speaks. The place from which I speak is that of a person who grew up in Italy during the economic miracle (pre-1968) in a working class family, watching film matinees on television during school holidays. All sort of films and genres were shown: from film noir to westerns, to Jean Renoir's films, German expressionism, Italian neorealism and Italian comedy. Cinema has come to represent over time a sort of memory extension that supplements lived memory of events, and one which, especially, mediates the intersection of many cultural discourses. When later in life I moved to Australia and started teaching in film studies, my choice of a film that was emblematic of neorealism went naturally to Roma città aperta (Open city hereafter) by Roberto Rossellini (1945), and not to Paisan or Sciuscà or Bicycle Thieves. My choice was certainly grounded in my personal memory - especially those aspects transmitted to me by my parents, who lived through the war and maintained that Open City had truly made them cry. With a mother who voted for the Christian Democratic Party and a father who was a unionist, I thought that this was normal in Italian families and society. In the early 1960s, the Resistance still offered a narrative of suffering and redemption, shared by Catholics or Communists. This construction of psychological realism is what I believe Open City continues to offer in time.

Going sideways in New Zealand

A 1,000-word travel article about wineries near Queenstown, New Zealand. "GRANT Taylor holds a glass of pinot noir to his ear and says, "I listen to it." It's 11 in the morning. I steal a glance at my guide, Mike Stevens, an English ex-pat who's lived in Queenstown for nearly 20 years, and so is very nearly a local. He's brought me here and knows Taylor well. We are all quite sober..."---publisher website

The Brisbane Line

A short 27 mins docudrama film. The Brisbane Line is a neo noir drama-documentary depicting the forgotten history surrounding the subtropical capital of Queensland, Australia. Set in the shadows of this sunshine city's unsolved crime, the film explores gaps between fact and fiction, memory and myth and excavates Brisbane's original sin [from DVD container]. The Brisbane Line is a film noir about the 1940s police force & corruption in Brisbane. The film is a creative research output, screened at Tribal Cinemas, Brisbane on the 8th November 2011.

QUT Architecture Film Studio (Aus)

Research Statement: An urban film produced by Luke Harrison Mitchell Benham, Sharlene Anderson, Tristan Clark. RIVE NOIR explores the film noir tradition, shot on location in a dark urban space between high-rises and the river, sheltered by a highway. With an original score and striking cinematography, Rive Noir radically transforms the abandoned river’s edge through the production of an amplified reality ordinarily unseen in the Northbank. The work produced under my supervision was selected to appear in the Expanded Architecture Research Group’s International Architecture Film Festival and Panel Discussion in Sydney: The University of Sydney and Carriageworks Performance Space, 06 November 2011. QUT School of Design research submission was selected alongside exhibits by AA School of Architecture, London; The Bartlett School of Architecture, London; University of The Arts, London; Arrhaus School of Architecture, Denmark; Dublin as a Cinematic City, Ireland; Design Lab Screen Studio, Australia; and Sona Cinecity, The University of Melbourne. The exhibit included not only the screening of the film but the design project that derived from and extended the aesthetics of the urban film. The urban proposal and architectural intervention that followed the film was subsequently published in the Brisbane Times, after the urban proposal won first place in The Future of Brisbane architecture competition, which demonstrates the impact of the research project as a whole. EXPANDED ARCHITECTURE 2011 - 6th November Architecture Film Night + Panel Discussion @ Performance Space CarriageWorks was Sydney's first International Architectural Film Festival. With over 40 architectural films by local and international artists, film makers and architects. It was followed by Panel Discussion of esteemed academics and artists working in the field of architectural film.

Feminist crime fiction : an examination of embodied feminist intentions in Denise Mina’s The Field of Blood (2005)

The writing of award winning tartan noir author, Denise Mina, “crime queen of Glasgow” has been identified with “explicitly feminist politics,” and Mina herself claims, as a feminist, she wants to use crime fiction to present a “narrative about very disempowered people becoming empowered.” This paper explores how Mina’s avowed stance on feminism plays out in her novel, The Field of Blood (2005), and examines whether her concerns are reflected in the embodied actions of her young protagonist, would-be investigative journalist, Paddy Meehan. It asks whether Mina has succeeded in working against entrenched patriarchal codes of crime fiction’s dominant narrative construction or whether her feminist intentions have been undermined by traditional stereotypical conventions of the genre.

Wine weekend in New Zealand

A travel article about the vineyards around Queenstown, New Zealand. GRANT Taylor holds a glass of pinot noir to his ear and says, "I listen to it." It's 11 in the morning. I steal a glance at my guide, Mike Stevens, an English ex-pat who's lived in Queenstown for nearly 20 years, and so is very nearly a local. He's brought me here and knows Taylor well. We are all quite sober...

Domestic violence on #qanda: The “Man” question in live Twitter discussion on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Q&A

Domestic violence is currently undergoing a period of heightened visibility in Australia. This article uses social media to analyze public discussions about this violence with respect to a specific theoretical frame, which Adrian Howe has called the “Man” question: where and how are men visible or invisible in narratives about their violence against women? The article presents a qualitative study of the Twitter conversation surrounding a special episode of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's television program Q&A, themed around family violence, which aired in February 2015. We found that the place of men in this conversation was contested. Some tweets privileged men's voices and concerns, as did the organization and production of the program. However, feminist voices were also highly visible via presenting facts, legitimating survivor voices, and recuperating anti-feminist memes to challenge hegemonic patriarchal discourses on men's violence against women. La violence conjugale connait actuellement une visibilité accrue en Australie. Les auteures du présent article utilisent les réseaux sociaux pour analyser les débats publics sur cette violence selon un cadre théorique précis, qu'Adrian Howe a appelé la question de « l'homme » : où et comment les hommes sont-ils visibles ou invisibles dans les récits de leur violence envers les femmes? L'article présente une étude qualitative d'une conversation sur Twitter au sujet d'un épisode axé sur la famille diffusé en février 2015 dans le cadre de l'émission Q & A, à la télévision nationale d'Australie. Nous avons remarqué que dans cette conversation la place des hommes était remise en question. Certains tweets privilégiaient les voix et les craintes des hommes, comme l'ont fait les organisateurs et les producteurs de l'émission. Cependant, il y avait une forte présence de voix féministes dans la présentation des faits, légitimant le point de vue des survivantes et relevant des éléments culturels antiféministes afin de défier les discours hégémoniques et patriarcaux sur la violence des hommes envers les femmes.