Jocelyn Moorhouse’s The Dressmaker, is the fifth highest grossing Australian film this decade – more women should be given the support to make big feature films.
Broad Green Pictures
In August, Screen Australia announced they had surpassed targets in their Gender Matters initative. But their September 2019 production funding round has no women directors or writers.
Two new screen productions – Ramy and Slam – tell stories embracing the complexity of young Arab and Muslim men in the US and Australia.
Hulu
Two new screen productions show us the nuances of growing up in Arab and Muslim migrant communities. They’re a refreshing look at stories too seldom told.
Damian Callinan, Josh McConville, Nick Cody, Sahil Saluja, and Ben Knight in The Merger (2018).
IMDB
The Merger draws on the conventions of the sports film to explore and challenge attitudes towards refugees in Australia.
Miranda Tapsell in Top End Wedding, a new Australian film about identity and belonging, directed by Wayne Blair (The Sapphires).
Courtesy of Universal Pictures
School stories hold a special place in popular culture. Stories set in Australian schools have often celebrated outsiders and underdogs, in contrast with their North American counterparts.
Leah Ashwood, Jasper Lloyd, and Texas Watterston in The School (2018).
Bronte Pictures, Head Gear Films, Kreo Films FZ
Jirga has a clear message to the Taliban, Westerners, and other Afghans - even in the horror of warfare you can’t escape moral accountability.
In Cargo, Martin Freeman plays Andy, a man who has to kill his wife after she turns into a zombie and travels across country with baby daughter Rosie on his back.
Addictive Pictures, Causeway Films, Head Gear Films
In Cargo, zombies roam Australia and Aboriginal people living off the land are best equipped to repel them. The first half hour is brilliant but the film becomes far less satisfying.
Muriel Heslop stole Australia’s heart when she debuted on screen in 1994. Now she gets a loving, ABBA-filled musical tribute, that is definitely not terrible.
Amazon this week purchased the global rights to J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings to turn it into a television series. What are the implications for Australia’s content and its global reach?
Bachelorette Sophie Monk with this year’s contestants.
Channel Ten
The Bachelorette might appear to be a progressive alternative to The Bachelor, but it is actually doing nothing for women when male bonds are central to its drama.
Natassia Gorie Furber and Hamilton Morris in Sweet Country.
IMDB
An Aboriginal man shoots a white landowner in self-defence, triggering a tragic tale of racism in 1920s Northern Territory.
Starting from … Now! tells the story of four women in Sydney. It’s one of many successful web series transforming the TV landscape.
Starting from ... Now!
From a supernatural lesbian drama to lipsynching female comedians to a popular You Tube science show, Australian web series are thriving.
David Gulpilil as the tracker Moodoo in the 2002 film Rabbit Proof Fence.
Rumbalara Films, Australian Film Commission, The, Australian Film Finance Corporation
Watching David Stratton’s loving recall of Australian films of the past 50 years over the past three weeks on the ABC, makes you realise how much impact they have had on us all. As one actor says, our…
Sydney Opera House during this year’s Vivid Festival: now, more than ever, we need artists to tell us the truth.
Tibor Kovacs/Flickr
There was once a sense of excitement about creating a genuinely Australian culture and making our own way in the world. What’s happened to that optimism?
Adaptations are a learned skill – can Australian cinema do it successfully?
The Dressmaker/Universal Pictures
With the success of films like The Dressmaker, book adaptations are giving a much needed boost to the Australian box office. So why are there so few? And why isn’t adaption a compulsory part of screen studies?
Filmmaker Paul Cox pictured with actor David Wenham in 2012.
Julian Smith/AAP
Editing a movie beside the late, great Paul Cox was like attending ‘a one on one’ film school. The growling auteur was a brilliantly stubborn man, who treated film with reverence and wore his heart on his sleeve.
Aaron Pedersen reprises his Mystery Road role as Jay Swan in Goldstone. Ivan Sen’s latest film draws together white, black and Chinese Australia.
Transmission Films
The Sydney Film Festival opens on Wednesday with the world premiere of Ivan Sen’s Goldstone. There is no filmmaker working here today who is more adept at touching the raw nerves of Australian culture.
Michael Hutchence bought name recognition to Dogs in Space.
The Making of Dogs in Space
Richard Lowenstein’s 1986 film Dogs in Space was a punk circus/social document that alienated many. But on the film’s 30th anniversary, it seems the world has caught up with it and a new audience of fans has emerged.