Review : "The Adventures of Barry McKenzie" -- Bruce Beresford

Synopsis and review of the Australian ocker comedy The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Bruce Beresford, 1972). Includes cast and credits. The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, adapted from a comic strip written by Barry Humphries, is a landmark film in the revival of Australian cinema. It was the first film to be fully funded by the new federal agency, the Australian Film Development Corporation (AFDC), and its unexpected success (in Britain as well as in Australia) both demonstrated that Australian films could be popular, and helped establish the ‘ocker comedy’ as the first indigenous (sub)genre of the Australian ‘new wave’. In common with other ocker comedies including Stork (Tim Burstall, 1971), and Alvin Purple (Tim Burstall, 1973), The Adventures of Barry McKenzie was derided by critics despite its popular success. But as Tom O’Regan has argued, these films were vitally important in developing a public profile for Australian films, for encouraging private investment in production, and for convincing exhibitors to screen Australian films...

From Aussiewood Movies to Guerrilla Filmmaking: Independent Filmmaking and Contemporary Australian Cinema

Independent filmmaking within the context of Australian cinema is a multifaceted subject. In comparison to the United States, where production can be characterised as bifurcated between major studio production and so-called “indie” or independent production without the backing of the majors, since the 1970s and until recently the vast majority of Australian feature film production has been independent filmmaking. Like most so-called national cinemas, most Australian movies are supported by both direct and indirect public subvention administered by state and federal government funding bodies, and it could be argued that filmmakers are, to a certain degree, “dependent” on official mandates. As this chapter demonstrates national production slates are subjected to budget restraints and cut-backs, official cultural policies (for example pursuing international co-productions and local content quotas) and shifts in policy directions among others. Therefore, within the context of Australian cinema, feature film production operating outside the public funding system could be understood as “independent”. However, as is the case for most English-language national cinemas, independence has long been defined in terms of autonomy from Hollywood, and – as alluded to above – as Australia becomes more dependent upon international inputs into production, higher budget movies are becoming less independent from Hollywood. As such, this chapter argues that independence in Australian cinema can be viewed as having two poles: independence from direct government funding and independence from Hollywood studios. With a specific focus on industry and policy contexts, this chapter explores key issues that constitute independence for Australian cinema. In so doing it examines the production characteristics of four primary domains of contemporary independent filmmaking in Australia, namely: “Aussiewood” production; government-backed low-to-mid budget production; co-productions; and guerrilla filmmaking.

A History of Popular Indigenous Music

SINCE THE INVENTION OF recording technologies like the phonograph in the late 1800s, Indigenous music has been performed and recorded across Australia for a wide range of audiences. In the early twentieth century, for instance, music was recorded by anthropologists keen to capture the sounds of a culture that was believed to be in rapid decline (Thomas). Individual performers were not considered important in these recordings; their music was produced for scientific posterity rather than popular pleasure. And even though Aboriginal participation in local music festivals, touring vaudeville shows, and community gatherings was well documented throughout the twentieth century, it was not until the 1950s that Indigenous “pop stars” began to sell records for mass consumption(Dunbar-Hall and Gibson). Yet, with the persistence of recording artists like Jimmy Little over the past sixty years, Indigenous musicians have steadily gained prominence in Australia’s mainstream. This has been particularly true of the past twenty years, especially since the Sydney Olympics, where promotional strategies have brought about a new popular pride in musical achievements, based upon a celebrated history of diverse sounds and voices.

The Killing of Angel Street

Synopsis and review of the Australian feature film The Killing of Angel Street, directed by Donald Crombie.

Black Nectar

Black Nectar is a site-specific light & sound installation, that asks audiences to take slow, sensory walks through the inky-blackness of Bundanon’s forests at night, charting personal courses through seasons of change, animality and imagination – far beyond the blinding lights and howling tones of our contemporary existence. Gathering during a time Europeans once named as ‘spring’ audiences will leave the comfy lights and sounds of Bundanon’s homestead area, to take powerful, personal, silent journeys into the long darks of night, heading ultimately towards the place of ‘Black Nectar’. This most unusual of walks begins with impending darkness, and yet ultimately ends with the faintest, sweetest of glimmers – an en-lightening, re-sounding of our seasonal futures?

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

Synopsis and critique of the unofficial American/Australian co-production film of animation and fantasy genres.

Social perception and cognition : processing of gestures, postures and facial expressions in the human brain

Humans are a social species with the internal capability to process social information from other humans. To understand others behavior and to react accordingly, it is necessary to infer their internal states, emotions and aims, which are conveyed by subtle nonverbal bodily cues such as postures, gestures, and facial expressions. This thesis investigates the brain functions underlying the processing of such social information. Studies I and II of this thesis explore the neural basis of perceiving pain from another person s facial expressions by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). In Study I, observing another s facial expression of pain activated the affective pain system (previously associated with self-experienced pain) in accordance with the intensity of the observed expression. The strength of the response in anterior insula was also linked to the observer s empathic abilities. The cortical processing of facial pain expressions advanced from the visual to temporal-lobe areas at similar latencies (around 300 500 ms) to those previously shown for emotional expressions such as fear or disgust. Study III shows that perceiving a yawning face is associated with middle and posterior STS activity, and the contagiousness of a yawn correlates negatively with amygdalar activity. Study IV explored the brain correlates of interpreting social interaction between two members of the same species, in this case human and canine. Observing interaction engaged brain activity in very similar manner for both species. Moreover, the body and object sensitive brain areas of dog experts differentiated interaction from noninteraction in both humans and dogs whereas in the control subjects, similar differentiation occurred only for humans. Finally, Study V shows the engagement of the brain area associated with biological motion when exposed to the sounds produced by a single human being walking. However, more complex pattern of activation, with the walking sounds of several persons, suggests that as the social situation becomes more complex so does the brain response. Taken together, these studies demonstrate the roles of distinct cortical and subcortical brain regions in the perception and sharing of others internal states via facial and bodily gestures, and the connection of brain responses to behavioral attributes.

Public history, private memories: Historical imagination in the new Italian cinema 1988-1999

The concern with the following arguments started during a study of national and international cinemas, from the desire to account for a cinema that internationally was doing well, but was undervalued domestically. The aims were to account for the renewal of Italian filmmaking from 1988, the New Italian cinema, and understand the conditions behind this renewal. The thesis identifies in the historical theme and in the recurrence of features from Italian cinema history elements of coherence with previous cinema production. The first consideration that emerges is that a triangulation between a new generation of filmmakers, their audience and recent history shaped the recovery of Italian cinema from 1988. A second consideration is that no discussion of Italian cinema can be separated from a discussion of that which it represents: Italian society and politics. This representation has not only addressed questions of identity for a cohort of spectators, but on occasions has captured the attention of the international audience. Thus the thesis follows a methodologic approach that positions texts in relation to certain traditions in Italian filmmaking and to the context by taking into consideration also industrial factors and social and historical changes. By drawing upon a range of disciplines, from political history to socio-psychological studies, the thesis has focussed on representation of history and memory in two periods of Italian film history: the first and the last decade of twentieth century. The concern has been not so much to interpret the films, but to understand the processes that made the films and how spectarors have applied their knowledge structures to make meaning of the films. Thus the thesis abstains from ascribing implicit meanings to films, but acknowledges how films project cultural contingencies. This is beacause film is shaped by production conditions and cultural and historical circumstances that make the film intelligible. As Bordwell stated in Making Meaning, "One can do other things with films besides 'reading' them" (1989, p. xiii). Within this framework, the thesis proposes a project that understands history films with the norms that govern Italian filmic output, those norms that regulate conditions of production and consumption and the relation between films from various traditions.

Silent Communication - A Challenge to Established Marketing Communication Practice

Purpose The paper examines the concept of silent communication and its implications in marketing communication. It defines silent communication and proposes an analytic framework enabling an expanded view of marketing communication. Design/methodology/approach By explicitly adopting a customer-oriented perspective, combined with insights from service marketing and relationship communication, the paper extends current models of marketing communication. Findings The paper identifies different types of silent communication and presents new perspectives on marketing communication. The authors outline a framework for understanding how the company can/cannot control different forms of marketing communication and discuss the implications of this. Research implications/limitations The paper concentrates on a conceptual analysis, offering a number of empirical illustrations. The conceptual development creates new research issues that should lead to a deeper understanding of customers’ meaning creation, actions and reactions. Practical implications Silent communication constitutes a managerial challenge as it is often invisible to the management. The paper points to the need to develop methods to reveal the effects of silent communication as well as create guidelines for managerially handling silent communication. Originality/value The customer-based perspective and the focus on silent communication provide a completely new approach to analysing and understanding marketing communication. The paper contributes to service marketing and marketing communication research by introducing conceptualisations of silent communication that have an interest for both academic research and practitioners.

Perceptual thresholds for detecting modifications applied to the acoustical properties of a violin

This study is the first step in the psychoacoustic exploration of perceptual differences between the sounds of different violins. A method was used which enabled the same performance to be replayed on different "virtual violins," so that the relationships between acoustical characteristics of violins and perceived qualities could be explored. Recordings of real performances were made using a bridge-mounted force transducer, giving an accurate representation of the signal from the violin string. These were then played through filters corresponding to the admittance curves of different violins. Initially, limits of listener performance in detecting changes in acoustical characteristics were characterized. These consisted of shifts in frequency or increases in amplitude of single modes or frequency bands that have been proposed previously to be significant in the perception of violin sound quality. Thresholds were significantly lower for musically trained than for nontrained subjects but were not significantly affected by the violin used as a baseline. Thresholds for the musicians typically ranged from 3 to 6 dB for amplitude changes and 1.5%-20% for frequency changes. interpretation of the results using excitation patterns showed that thresholds for the best subjects were quite well predicted by a multichannel model based on optimal processing. (c) 2007 Acoustical Society of America.

A paixão de olhar: a cidade no cinema brasileiro

Desde a criação do cinema, em 1895, a cidade vem sendo retratada de forma surpreendente para quem a vivencia em seu cotidiano. A arte do cinema amplia o sentido de realidade e provoca um impacto sobre o universo psicológico e social do homem. O cinema brasileiro acompanha, através de sua vasta produção, o percurso da cidade no tocante ao desenvolvimento estético, social, cultural, político e econômico, apresentando a forma através da qual o homem se relaciona com essas variáveis. O historiador Michel de Certeau desenvolve em sua obra o tema da inventividade do cotidiano, no que se refere à prática do espaço. Os conceitos de espaço (um lugar praticado), e de lugar (um espaço geométrico), permitem aprofundar o estudo do papel do homem no cotidiano da cidade. É este o eixo teórico da presente pesquisa, que pretende estudar o imaginário da cidade no cinema brasileiro a partir de três questões principais: a formação do imaginário urbano, a criação da forma da cidade no cinema (locações, cenários e fisionomias) e o estado de solidão e isolamento vivido pelo homem nas grandes cidades. Para tal, foram escolhidas para análise as seguintes produções brasileiras: Dias de Nietzsche em Turim (2001) de Julio Bressane, O Príncipe (2002) de Ugo Giorgetti e O Outro Lado da Rua (2004) de Marcos Bernstein. A cidade representada nesses filmes nos dá a oportunidade de exercitar o olhar e refletir sobre o cotidiano da vida urbana e seus reflexos no universo psicológico do homem contemporâneo

O novo por escrito: cinema, crítica, nacionalismo (196064)

Este trabalho teve dois objetivos fundamentais: definir a arquitetura conceitual do que chamamos discurso do Cinema Novo; e analisar as formas como o movimento foi recebido pela crítica, com o objetivo de compreender o que o Cinema Novo deve, em termos discursivos e de prestígio, a esse diálogo. Partindo do conceito de campo cultural tal como pensado pelo sociólogo Pierre Bourdieu, ou seja, como espaço de lutas simbólicas pelo controle de lugares de poder e dos índices de valor que definem uma determinada atividade cultural, conclui-se que o prestígio alcançado pelo Cinema Novo já em seus primeiros anos se deve fundamentalmente à capacidade do grupo em responder a demanda dos setores simbolicamente dominantes da crítica por um cinema que fosse ao mesmo tempo autêntico, com toda ambiguidade que guarda o termo, e moderno, segundo as convenções estabelecidas pelas cinematografias europeias, como o neorrealismo e a Nouvelle Vague. Assim, tal como compreendemos, o Cinema Novo foi uma estratégia de comunicação e de inserção no campo cinematográfico brasileiro. Nesse trabalho, não nos propusemos analisar os filmes, cuja descrição foi feita apenas quando acreditamos fundamental para a compreensão do discurso crítico. Nossas fontes foram fundamentalmente artigos da crítica cinematográfica publicados na imprensa cultural da época. Para análise desses artigos, nos valemos das reflexões teóricas de Mikhail Bakhtin sobre a linguagem e das ferramentas teóricas da análise do discurso tal como apresentada por Michel Pêcheux e alguns comentadores de sua obra, como Eni Orlandi e José Luiz Fiorin

Short reflections on the history of African communication

This article aims to propose a chronological subdivision in the history of African communication. African communication today is one of the most important axes for implementing development strategies, sustaining education, health, and schooling programmes, and so on. However, many of these programmes fail due to a lack of or ineffective communication between international organisations, local elite and lay people. The reasons for this situation must be found in Africa’s history of communication, which has undergone radical transformations in its different phases. Using the functionalist analysis drawn up by Jakobson, this article proposes a new chronological subdivision of Africa’s history of communication, reflecting on the current contradictions in contemporary communication in Africa.

Japan’s Blair Witch: Restraint, Maturity, and Generic Canons in the British Critical Reception of Ring

This essay examines the British critical reception of the Japanese horror ? lm Ring. Critics claimed that Ring was representative of a non-graphic, suggestive tradition in horror, and used the ?lm rhetorically to present a sense of difference from teen horror ?lms such as Scream.