Towards an understanding of Australian genre cinema and entertainment : beyond the limitations of ‘Ozploitation’ discourse

While Australian cinema has produced popular movie genres since the 1970s, including action/adventure, road movies, crime, and horror movies, genre cinema has occupied a precarious position within a subsidised national cinema and has been largely written out of film history. In recent years the documentary Not Quite Hollywood (2008) has brought Australia’s genre movie heritage from the 1970s and 1980s back to the attention of cinephiles, critics and cult audiences worldwide. Since its release, the term ‘Ozploitation’ has become synonymous with Australian genre movies. In the absence of discussion about genre cinema within film studies, Ozploitation (and ‘paracinema’ as a theoretical lens) has emerged as a critical framework to fill this void as a de facto approach to genre and a conceptual framework for understanding Australian genres movies. However, although the Ozploitation brand has been extremely successful in raising the awareness of local genre flicks, Ozploitation discourse poses problems for film studies, and its utility is limited for the study of Australian genre movies. This paper argues that Ozploitation limits analysis of genre movies to the narrow confines of exploitation or trash cinema and obscures more important discussion of how Australian cinema engages with popular movies genres, the idea of Australian filmmaking as entertainment, and the dynamics of commercial filmmaking practises more generally.

Towards an understanding of Australian genre cinema and entertainment : beyond the limitations of ‘Ozploitation’ discourse

While Australian cinema has produced popular movie genres since the 1970s, including action/adventure, road movies, crime, and horror movies, genre cinema has occupied a precarious position within a subsidised national cinema and has been largely written out of film history. In recent years the documentary Not Quite Hollywood (2008) has brought Australia’s genre movie heritage from the 1970s and 1980s back to the attention of cinephiles, critics and cult audiences worldwide. Since its release, the term ‘Ozploitation’ has become synonymous with Australian genre movies. In the absence of discussion about genre cinema within film studies, Ozploitation (and ‘paracinema’ as a theoretical lens) has emerged as a critical framework to fill this void as a de facto approach to genre and a conceptual framework for understanding Australian genres movies. However, although the Ozploitation brand has been extremely successful in raising the awareness of local genre flicks, Ozploitation discourse poses problems for film studies, and its utility is limited for the study of Australian genre movies. This paper argues that Ozploitation limits analysis of genre movies to the narrow confines of exploitation or trash cinema and obscures more important discussion of how Australian cinema engages with popular movies genres, the idea of Australian filmmaking as entertainment, and the dynamics of commercial filmmaking practises more generally.

Joy fear and poetry

Joy Fear and Poetry is an original performance work written, designed and directed by Natasha Budd in collaboration with 15 performers aged 7-12 years. It was performed in Brisbane as part of La Boite Theatre’s 2013 Indie Season. The production employs contemporary performance, postdramatic and constructivist methodologies to make an intervention into habituated patterns of positioning children in society. It embodies a model of practice that moves beyond participant empowerment toward a more nuanced process of co-artists creating intersubjective ‘composite texts’ (McCall 2011) for mainstream audiences. Joy Fear and Poetry experiments with techniques for performance making that create conditions conducive to authentic theatre making with children. These focus on dramaturgical, directorial and design strategies harnessed to maintain the performers’ focus, motivation and cognitive engagement within a reflexive, collaborative process.

Fresh Cuttings: A Celebration of Fiction and Poetry from UQP's Black Writing Series

As the first anthology of UQP's indigenous-authored books, Fresh Cuttings represents the very best of fiction and poetry publishing from UQP's Black Australian Writing series. An introduction by the editors and a biography of each author is included.

Creative Labor in Cinema and Media Industries

Introduction The rapidly burgeoning popularity of cinema at the beginning of the 20th century favored industrialized modes of creativity organized around large production studios that could churn out a steady stream of narrative feature films. By the mid-1910s, a handful of Hollywood studios became leaders in the production, distribution, and exhibition of popular commercial movies. In order to serve incessant demand for new titles, the studios relied on a set of conventions that allowed them to regularize production and realize workplace efficiencies. This entailed a socialized mode of creativity that would later be adopted by radio and television broadcasters. It would also become a model for cinema and media production around the world, both for commercial and state-supported institutions. Even today the core tenets of industrialized creativity prevail in most large media enterprises. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, media industries began to change radically, driven by forces of neoliberalism, corporate conglomeration, globalization, and technological innovation. Today, screen media are created both by large-scale production units and by networked ensembles of talent and skilled labor. Moreover, digital media production may take place in small shops or via the collective labor of media users or fans who have attracted attention due to their hyphenated status as both producers and users of media (i.e., “prosumers”). Studies of screen media labor fall into five conceptual and methodological categories: historical studies of labor relations, ethnographically inspired investigations of workplace dynamics, critical analyses of the spatial and social organization of labor, and normative assessments of industrialized creativity.

Reflective writing: The student nurse's perspective on reflective writing and poetry writing.

Summary Background Reflective writing is a mandatory part of nurse education but how students develop their skills and use reflection as part of their experiential learning remains relatively unknown. Understanding reflective writing in all forms from the perspective of a student nurse is therefore important. Objectives To explore the use of reflective writing and the use of poetry in pre-registered nursing students. Design A qualitative design was employed to explore reflective writing in pre-registered nursing students. Setting A small university in Scotland. Participants BSc (Hons) Adult and Mental Health Pre-registration Student Nurses. Methods Two focus groups were conducted with 10 student nurses during March 2012. Data was analysed thematically using the framework of McCarthy (1999). Results Students found the process of reflective writing daunting but valued it over time. Current educational methods, such as assessing reflective accounts, often lead to the ‘narrative’ being watered down and the student feeling judged. Despite this, reflection made students feel responsible for their own learning and research on the topic. Some students felt the use of models of reflection constricting, whilst poetry freed up their expression allowing them to demonstrate the compassion for their patient under their care. Conclusions Poetry writing gives students the opportunity for freedom of expression, personal satisfaction and a closer connection with their patients, which the more formal approach to reflective writing did not offer. There is a need for students to have a safe and supportive forum in which to express and have their experiences acknowledged without the fear of being judged.

La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Itallian Giallo Film

Koven, M. (2006). La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Itallian Giallo Film. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. RAE2008

Early Cinema and Oklahoma

This article provides the first history of early cinema in the territory and (from 1907) US state of Oklahoma. It covers the origins and proliferation of fiction and nonfiction filmmaking, paying particular attention to the various films produced at the 101 Ranch and the Pawnee Bill Ranch. It also covers the beginnings of newsreel footage in the state. The article also delves into the issues of film exhibition in Oklahoma, ranging from the earliest film screenings to the nickelodeon era, and also provides a history of efforts towards censorship in the pre-1915 era.