Towards a politics and art of the land : gothic cinema of the Australian new wave and its reception by American film critics

This article will drill down to the level of the reception of two examples of Australian gothic film-making by two well-known American critics. Rayner’s comparison of Australian gothic with American film noir is useful; however, it begs the question of how American critics such as Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris influentially shaped the reception of Australian gothic in America and in other locations (such as Australia itself) where their reviews found an audience either at the time or afterwards. The significance of the present article rests on the fact that, as William McClain observes, following in Rick Altman’s footsteps, “critics form one of the key material institutions that support generic formations” (54). This article nurtures the suggestion that knowing how Australian gothic cinema was shaped, in its infancy, in the increasingly important American market (a market of both commerce and ideas) might usefully inform revisionist studies of Australian cinema as a national mode.

Whisper our futures

Whisper Our Futures was an invited design proposal to produce a major public artwork for the State of Queensland’s 150th Anniversary Celebrations. It involved a network of 100 individual scrolling digital text boxes each with individual audio systems arranged together in a tessellated format. This form (specified by the originating brief) both mimicked the soaring gothic arches typical of Queensland cathedrals and was also suggestive of their stained glass windows. Each text module presented a message in both visual and audible forms for Queenslanders living 150 years hence - spoken both by the general public aw well as prominent figures. In this way the work was designed as a focus of future hope, historical reflection and inspiration to visitors to Queensland cathedrals throughout the entire year of celebrations (2009). The work was planned to premiere at Brisbane’s main Anglican Cathedral and then tour to nine other state cathedrals throughout 2009.---- Two staged proposals and budgets were invited throughout 2007. After the second successful proposal stage the State Premier and cabinet changed, ultimately leading the public art components to be dropped from the program. The proposal currently remains on file at the Queensland Premiers Office.

Australasian horror special issue editorial : putting Australian and New Zealand horror movies on the map of cinema studies

This Australasian horror special issue is an important step forward in putting Australian and New Zealand horror movies on the map of film and cinema studies as a subject worthy of intellectual debate. The journal issue is the first devoted solely to the academic discussion of Australasian horror movies. While an Australian horror movie tradition has produced numerous titles since the 1970s achieving commercial success and cult popularity worldwide, the horror genre is largely missing from Australian film history. While there have been occasional essays on standout titles such as Wolf Creek (Mclean, 2005), an increasing number of articles on ‘Ozploitation’ movies, and irregular discussion about Australian Gothic, overall the nature of Australian horror as a genre remains poorly understood. In terms of New Zealand, debate has tended to revolve around ‘Kiwi Gothic’ and of course Peter Jackon’s early splatter films, rather than Kiwi horror as a specific filmmaking tradition.

Australasian horror

This Australasian horror special issue is an important step forward in putting Australian and New Zealand horror movies on the map of film and cinema studies as a subject worthy of intellectual debate. The journal issue is the first devoted solely to the academic discussion of Australasian horror movies. While an Australian horror movie tradition has produced numerous titles since the 1970s achieving commercial success and cult popularity worldwide, the horror genre is largely missing from Australian film history. While there have been occasional essays on standout titles such as Wolf Creek (Mclean, 2005), an increasing number of articles on ‘Ozploitation’ movies, and irregular discussion about Australian Gothic, overall the nature of Australian horror as a genre remains poorly understood. In terms of New Zealand, debate has tended to revolve around ‘Kiwi Gothic’ and of course Peter Jackon’s early splatter films, rather than Kiwi horror as a specific filmmaking tradition.

Byron's back from the dead? : revenants of Romanticism in contemporary young adult fiction

Often identified as the origin of today’s children’s literature, Romanticism offers a particular context for interrogating boundaries between child and adult. Since the turn of the nineteenth century, however, Western society has “invented” the teenager to figure and to police the boundary between childhood and adulthood. In due course, twenty-first-century young adult (YA) novels such as Susan Davis’s Mad, Bad and Totally Dangerous (2004) and Cara Lockwood’s Wuthering High: A Bard Academy Novel (2006) have combined the Romantic and the adolescent in narratives which turn on supernatural invocation of Romantic authors as “really” present in contemporary adolescent lives. These novels tell stories of adolescence in which the self comes to be known via embodied encounters with dead authors, in particular, with Byron. Where “Byron scholarship has worked hard to disassociate the poet from this kind of pop-Gothic depiction, seeing it as the inevitable but regrettable offspring of nineteenth-century Byromania” (McDayter 30), contemporary YA fiction suggests that it is precisely via pop-Gothic depictions that today’s adolescents may first come to know the Romantic in general and the Byronic in particular. This paper reads these novels in the context of current anxieties about cultural illiteracy and educational “failure” in order to consider what work is being undertaken in the name of Byron, and to shed light on the ways in which cultural education may be taking place far beyond the realms of schools or cemeteries for today’s young readers.

Lolipop: A downtown Auckland view on Japanese street fashion

Loli-Pop brings together the relationships between the Loli-Goth and popular culture, and the strong association of the Loli-Goth with the doll, including a selection from Hardy Bernal’s personal collection of Japanese Lolita dolls. This display is supported by the highlight of the show, five full-sized garments created and constructed by AUT University Fashion staff members, Angie Finn, Yvonne Stewart, Lize Niemczyk, Gabriella Trussardi, Carmel Donnelly and Kathryn Hardy Bernal, which demonstrate the designers’ own interpretations of Gothic & Lolita, inspired by Japanese street style. The exhibit is complimented by a backdrop of photographs that illustrate the impact of the outfits when worn, modelled by AUT University Bachelor of Fashion Design students, Emily Huang, Shangshang Cookie Wang, Emily Wang, Shiahug-Wen Sean Kuo and Yanling Wang.

Natures muses in Bruno Tuat’s Glashaus

Constructed for the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, Germany, the Glashaus was both a seminal example of early modernist architecture and Bruno Taut’s signature building. Over time, metaphors have come to be applied to the Glashaus. Within the realm of nature these metaphors include cosmic, geological, botanic and sexual. However these metaphors, like the history of the Glashaus, are not a foregone conclusion. Recently it has been argued that the majority of our current knowledge regarding the Glashaus derives not from the perspective of Bruno Taut as the architect, but rather directly from perspective of the art critic Adolf Behne. This argument goes further and proposes that Behne’s official history of Glashaus is possibly fabricated propaganda. So, if indeed the official history of the Glashaus is questionable, then too are the natural metaphors commonly applied to the building. By revisiting Bruno Taut’s pre-1915 writings, this investigation reveals that botanic metaphors appear to have been Taut’s primary source of inspiration for the design of the Glashaus. Through the exposure of this fact, this research contributes significantly to the current debates surrounding Bruno Taut, the Glashaus and the re-evaluation of the official histories of the modern movement.

Science fiction

Few science fiction films have been made in Australia by Australians for Australian audiences, with most of the handful of locally-produced films made since the mid-1990s. Yet there has always been a solid Australian audience for non-Australian science fiction films and a strong international niche audience for the genre. While Australia has provided below-the-line crews and heads of departments (cinematographers, production designers, and so on) for many non-Australian science fiction films produced domestically, few Australian film directors have specialised in the genre. This is somewhat surprising considering that Alex Proyas achieved a degree of international success for his gothic science fiction film Dark City (1998), and George Miller achieved international fame following the worldwide success of Mad Max II (1981). Although the science fiction element of Mad Max II is tenuous – and even more so in the case of the original Mad Max (George Miller, 1979) – Miller is credited with creating a new (sub)genre which incorporates science fiction elements and has been widely imitated internationally: the dystopian, post-apocalyptic movie. Nevertheless, Australia has only produced a small number of science fiction movies. In addition to the above films, key titles include: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (George Miller, 1985), Shirley Thompson versus the Aliens (Jim Sharman, 1972), The Time Guardian (Brian Hannant, 1987), The Chain Reaction (Ian Barry, 1980) and, more recently, Knowing (Alex Proyas, 2009), Daybreakers (Michael and Peter Spierig, 2009), and Iron Sky (Timo Vuorensola, 2012).

Horror

The monstrous landscape and the revenge of nature are recurring motifs in Australian cinema. In the horror genre, the idea of the monstrous landscape emerges from, and builds upon, an established tradition in Australian cinema in which landscape functions not just as a setting for action, but also as a character in its own right. Rather than a picturesque wilderness or countryside, or a serene natural world untainted by civilisation – representations common in landscape cinema celebrating positive aspects of the Australian ‘outback’ – the monstrous landscape is a dangerous, malevolent and threatening force. Drawing upon themes also common in Australian Gothic narratives such as entrapment in a hostile environment, isolation and fear of the unknown (Turcotte, 1988, see also Jonathan Rayner’s essay in this volume), the monstrous landscape acts according to its own logic indecipherable to non-Indigenous Australians and is represented in terms of its alien-ness and inhuman horror.

The lily, client and measure of Bruno Taut’s Glashaus

The Glashaus is considered a significant exemplar of early modernist architecture and is generally accepted as having had Expressionist origins. However, current research has revealed that the design origins of this important building are not fully understood. While the historical record acknowledges the contributions of the bohemian poet Paul Scheerbart and the art critic Adolf Behne, the role of the Glashaus’ architect, Bruno Taut, has been moderated. In an attempt to rectify this situation this article proposes that the design origins of the Glashaus can be found in a strong architect-client interaction. It is argued that the Glashaus’ client, the Deutsche Luxfer Prismen Syndikat under the directorship of Frederick Keppler, exerted a significant influence on its design. In order to showcase the glazed products of Luxfer in the best manner possible, Keppler insisted that the design feature a glazed dome, electric lighting, a fountain as well as a cascade. Given the detailed stipulations of this brief, Taut had few options other than to offer interpretations of precedent that derived from the Victoria regia lily and Gothic proportioning. By expounding this architect-client relationship, this article expands our understanding of the Glashaus, and reinvigorates our understanding of this important early example of modern architecture.

Regards, the Pit

A solo exhibition by Joseph Breikers included in the MetroArts 2011 galleries Program. The exhbition comprised a series of predominantly sculptural works that reflected the artists ongoing interest in medieval, gothic and death metal visual motifs. The exhibition thus acted as a ironic meditation on ritual, belonging and cultural identity.

Knowing

Directed by Alex Proyas, the Knowing is an action-packed science-fiction disaster movie. A well-known Australian director working in Hollywood, Proyas has developed an international reputation for stylised fantasy and science-fiction movies, including the neo-gothic movie The Crow (1994), the complex science-fiction film Dark City (1998), and the adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi classic I, Robot (2004) which earned almost US$350 million theatrically worldwide. Knowing was produced for US$50 million and relies heavily upon special effects (including a visually impressive sequence of the world being destroyed) and high-octane action sequences (including a notable plane crash). Knowing’s cast included Australian actors, Rose Byrne and Ben Mendelsohn, and American actor Nicolas Cage. While Knowing received typically poor critical reviews, the movie performed well at the box-office earning over US$183 million worldwide.

Bruno Taut’s design inspiration for the Glashaus

As a formative exemplar of early architectural modernism, Bruno Taut’s seminal exhibition pavilion the Glashaus (literally translated Glasshouse) is logically part of the important debate of rethinking the origins of modernism. However, the historical record of Bruno Taut’s Glashaus has been primarily established by one art historian and critic. As a result the historical record of the Glashaus is significantly skewed toward a singlular notion of Expressionism and surprisingly excludes Taut’s diverse motives for the design of the building. In an effort to clarify the problematic historical record of the Glashaus, this book exposes Bruno Taut’s motives and inspirations for its design. The result is that Taut’s motives can be found in yet unacknowledged precedents like the botanical inspiration of the Victoria regia lily; the commercial interests of Frederick Keppler as the Director of the Deutche Luxfer Prismen Syndikat; and imitation that derived openly from the Gothic. The outcome is a substantial contribution to the re-evaluation of the generally accepted histories of the modern movement in architecture.

Letter to Dr. Simeon Leo

Letter to Dr. Simeon Leo from Edward Frankel. In English script on stationery with a gothic 'E' printed at top center.

Letter of condolence to Dr. Simeon Leo

Condolence letter to Dr. Leo on the death of his father from Lina Straus. On white folded paper with gold gothic initial.