Viewing Australia through an international lens
Offshore Processes: International Perspectives on Australian Film and Television
Australia’s seriousness and the way ‘Australianness’ circulates at an international level could be traced back to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, according to a leading Australian cultural studies expert.
Skippy is just one of the Australian film and television series to be discussed at an upcoming symposium that will explore the need for new historical and critical frameworks for analysing offshore processes in the production of Australian screen content and the inter-cultural interactions of its reception.
Convened by Monash University’s Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory and the National Centre for Australian Studies, ‘Offshore Processes: International Perspectives on Australian Film and Television’ will see an array of experts descend upon the University’s Prato Centre.
Head of the Research Unit in Film Culture and conference co-convener, Dr Therese Davis will be addressing the symposium discussing Australian Indigenous mainstream filmmaking.
“Hollywood has been a particular kind of fantasy cinema in Australian Indigenous cultural life since at last the 1920s. I will be discussing how the paradigms of Australian national cinema have limited our understandings of Indigenous spectatorship,” Dr Davis said.
“I will continue to discuss how these paradigms have shaped non-Indigenous reception and understandings of Indigenous film and the global reach of Indigenous filmmakers’ ambitions.”
The symposium will include film screenings, public talks and a research seminar and workshop.
Director of the National Centre of Australian Studies and conference co-convener, Dr Tony Moore, said one of the innovative elements of the symposium is the engagement with European and other international scholars.
“This event is a joint effort between two different areas in Monash University’s Faculty of Arts, Screen and Australian Studies, and locates the creation and reception of our screen culture in a global and not merely national context, so international collaboration and interdisciplinary is to the fore,” Dr Moore said.
“The event has not only been supported by both the schools of English, Communications and Performance Studies and Journalism, Australian and Indigenous Studies and the faculty, but also by the University, as it is advancing our international engagement and research goals.”
The symposium also features a mini-film-festival that opens with Baz Lurhman’s Australia, the subject of a keynote address by leading international scholar Professor Meaghan Morris from the University of Sydney/Lingnan HK.
Dr Liz Conor and Associate Professor Mark Gibson, both from the National Centre for Australian Studies, are also co-conveners of the symposium.
Offshore Processes: International Perspectives on Australian Film and Television will be held from 8-11 July at the Monash Prato Centre, Italy. For a full program and registrations, visit the Faculty of Arts website.
As part of the Prato Centre's Winter School, Dr Davis and Dr Moore will be teaching an intensive undergraduate unit exploring related themes entitled ‘Imaging Australia’, with students attending the symposium as part of their studies.