Author Description

<p><b>The first comprehensive volume of original essays on Australian screen culture in the twenty-first century.</b></p> <p><i>A Companion to Australian Cinema </i>is an anthology of original essays by new and established authors on the contemporary state and future directions of a well-established national cinema. A timely intervention that challenges and expands the idea of cinema, this book brings into sharp focus those facets of Australian cinema that have endured, evolved and emerged in the twenty-first century.</p> <p>The essays address six thematically-organized propositions – that Australian cinema is an Indigenous screen culture, an international cinema, a minor transnational imaginary, an enduring auteur-genre-landscape tradition, a televisual industry and a multiplatform ecology. Offering fresh critical perspectives and extending previous scholarship, case studies range from <i>The Lego Movie</i>, <i>Mad Max</i>, and Australian stars in Hollywood, to transnational co-productions, YouTube channels, transmedia and nature-cam documentaries. New research on trends – such as the convergence of television and film, digital transformations of screen production and the shifting roles of women on and off-screen – highlight how established precedents have been influenced by new realities beyond both cinema and the national.</p> <ul> <li>Written in an accessible style that does not require knowledge of cinema studies or Australian studies</li> <li>Presents original research on Australian actors, such as Cate Blanchett and Chris Hemsworth, their training, branding, and path from Australia to Hollywood</li> <li>Explores the films and filmmakers of the Blak Wave and their challenge to Australian settler-colonial history and white identity</li> <li>Expands the critical definition of cinema to include YouTube channels, transmedia documentaries, multiplatform changescapes and cinematic remix</li> <li>Introduces readers to founding texts in Australian screen studies</li>