Silence and Fury: Rape and The Virgin Spring
Abstract This article is a reconsideration of The Virgin Spring that focuses upon the rape at the centre of the film’s action, despite the film’s surface attempts to marginalise all but its…
‘Conspicuous Absence’ and ‘Morbid Curiosity’: The Promotion and Reception of Saratoga (USA 1937)
Abstract The death of Jean Harlow during the filming of Saratoga (USA 1937) created problems for the film’s completion and promotion. Famously, M-G-M completed Harlow’s remaining scenes using shots of a body…
Patineur Grotesque: Marius Sestier and the Lumière Cinématographe in Australia, September-November 1896
Marius Sestier holding a stereo viewer. Postcard. Marius Sestier Collection. National Film and Sound Archive. Courtesy Mme Petitbois and Messrs Sestier and Jeune. Patineur Grotesque (Australia 1896), although filmed in Melbourne,…
Intercultural Romance and Australian Cinema: Asia and Australia in The Home Song Stories and Mao’s Last Dancer
Abstract This essay frames an examination of The Home Song Stories (2007) and Mao’s Last Dancer (2009) through tracing the cultural and symbolic development of intercultural romance in Australian cinema between white and East…
Koyaanisqatsi and the Visual Narrative of Environmental Film
Abstract Godfrey Reggio’s non-verbal film Koyaanisqatsi can be seen, in retrospect, as a pioneer both of the emergent environmental film genre, and of certain tropes of visual narrative that have come to…
The End of Life on Earth?: Discourses of Risk in Natural History Documentaries
Abstract An implicit theme in natural history documentaries for decades has been the likely impact of such human activities as population growth, land clearing, mining, pesticide usage, and pollution on…
Film at the Millennium
Abstract Approaching the millennium, and in its immediate wake, a strong sense of historical lateness emerged, a very particular fin de siècle. In film history, this was immediately preceded by the…