They say first impressions are important. I vividly remember the first time I saw Leonie. Thin, elegant and dressed entirely in black, with a shock of cropped, blond hair and a mouth defined by outrageously outré lipstick – she made a memorable impact as she entered the lecture theatre.

Leonie’s approach to teaching film matched her singular style. She offered a thrilling, original and innovative introduction to a wide range of theories, genres and issues: psychoanalysis, feminist film theory, national cinemas (including her own speciality, German cinema), contemporary Hollywood film, the horror genre, semiotics, gender studies, film noir, male melodrama, I could go on …

Leonie’s intellectual curiosity was genuine and expansive, as reflected in her eclectic Honours film theory curriculum. She had us analysing everything from the subtextual operations of wildlife documentary commentaries to Freud’s primary sources in relation to mainstream Hollywood thrillers. It was a truly revelatory experience. I hadn’t intended to study film at post-graduate level, and it was in large part because of Leonie’s inspirational teaching that I became hooked on the discipline of cinema studies.
In the course of Leonie’s lengthy academic career, I was just one of literally thousands of students who were similarly galvanized by both her substance and style. In the early to mid 1990s, her Monash University course in Contemporary Popular Film attracted huge enrolments. I can still remember the palpable ‘buzz’ before lectures, as hundreds of wet-behind-the-ears first year students waited eagerly for her wicked asides and original take on the film of the week.

Her course on ‘Masculinity in cinema’ garnered equally devoted fans. A provocative examination of gender that took in everything from The Last of the Mohicans to uncompromising German psychodrama, the course generated some of the most passionate and fascinating tutorial discussions I have ever had the pleasure of facilitating.

Part of Leonie’s appeal as a lecturer was her combination of playfulness and intellectual rigour. In one lecture, sometimes even in one sentence, she could deliver a startlingly original reading of a film, while drooling unashamedly over the attributes of its male lead! She made no secret of her many and varied objects of cinematic obsession, making it sound somehow reasonable to compare the merits of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Daniel Day Lewis in the same breath! Even if students did not always agree with her personal fixations, Leonie’s appealingly irreverent approach encouraged first and foremost, a passion for cinema in all its theoretical and fully fleshed out glory.

Leonie was responsible for many ‘firsts’ in my academic life. As her Honours student, she offered me my first tutoring job. My first lecture and publication opportunities came about entirely through her efforts. She spotted the advertisement and actively supported my successful application for my first teaching position beyond Monash University.

For this and many other things, I cannot thank her enough.

And there were many like me whom she prompted, nurtured, encouraged and where necessary, provoked into original thought and academic action. In addition to her substantial publication record, Leonie’s legacy will be felt not only in the work of those who followed her inspirational lead into film scholarship, but equally in those students who simply came away from her courses instilled with a broader appreciation of the complex attractions of the moving image.

Loyal friend and mentor of 20 years and fellow feline aficionado – the world is a less colourful place without you.

Rose Capp 10/2007

Rose Capp was Leonie’s student and colleague at Monash University and is currently a film critic for The Melbourne Times and writer on film.

Created on: Thursday, 19 December 2007