The government has announced its latest method to stop the boats: a telemovie with storylines about asylum seekers dying at sea. Is it really the role of government to fund propaganda pieces like this?
The arrival of subscription video on demand services Netflix, Stan and Presto have implications for what we call “television” in Australia – and much of the policy detail remains to be hammered out.
Many successful shows spawn sequels. In Better Call Saul, writer Vince Gilligan has created a prequel to his phenomenally successful series Breaking Bad. And it works. So how has he done it?
AMC’s zombie hit The Walking Dead has garnered a huge global audience. As the finale of the series’ fifth season screens, we should pay attention not to the zombies – but to the survivors.
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film Leviathan explores the ‘symphonia’ of church and state in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In doing so it taps into a tradition in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema.
The curators of queer film festivals undertake a challenging task, assembling as best as possible a cinematic selection that reflects what is a very diverse community. Too often, lesbians are left out.
Empire, a TV drama about a black hip-hop star turned music mogul, is breaking new ground by foregrounding ‘risky’ issues around race, sexuality and class.
Why don’t we Australians love our Neighbours? Perhaps the long-running soap is a local victim of tall poppy syndrome – but the sunny vision of Australian suburban life remains wildly popular internationally.
Speaking with: David Tiley on funding Australian films
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Vincent O’Donnell speaks with David Tiley, editor of ScreenHub magazine, about financing film production in Australia and looking beyond box office numbers to measure a film's success.
What are we really looking at when we watch a screen? There’s more to it than Gogglebox. Advances in eye-tracking technology are transforming how we understand film and TV spectatorship.
The camera, situated in the middle of the foyer of a public building, looks through large windows into the street and city beyond. The protagonist couple of Eastern Boys – affluent Frenchman Daniel (Olivier…
This Valentine’s Day, why not ditch the roses and celebrate by watching some sexual violence? That’s a more honest marketing pitch for the Fifty Shades of Grey film. It’s astonishing that, in 2015, sexual…
Why have the landmark psychology experiments of the post-war era proved so enduring? Designed as dramas about human behaviour, experimenters drew on theatrical techniques and tailored their results for…
What do Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Simpsons, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film Birdman have in common? All three utilise the concept of meta-theatre. The concept of meta-theatre, or meta-text, in its crudest…
Show a gay man on TV, and you immediately open yourself up to a degree of scrutiny that other artists usually have the privilege of avoiding. Representations of marginalised subjects on screen or in literature…
At the opening night of the Victorian College of the Arts graduate film screening season this month, keynote speaker Clayton Jacobson (writer/director of Kenny, 2006) mentioned to the audience his belief…
Tis the season to make Top 10 lists. Why? Because we are hurtling with unavoidable haste toward the end of another calendar year. It’s almost impossible to get through the day without some kind of Top…
Are there lessons to be learnt from the success of the seminal Australian music program Countdown, and the ways in which it bolstered the Australian music industry during the 70s and 80s? Do Yourself a…