Australian Film

The Turning

September 2013, no. 354

Anthology films are expected to be uneven; in a way, the unevenness is the point. With no less than eighteen directors on board, this adaptation of Tim Winton’s short story collection The Turning (2004) resembles an epic round of the surrealist game Exquisite Corpse, in which players separately draw parts of a human figure on a sheet of paper which is then unfolded to reveal the bizarre whole.

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Memoirs of a Young Bastard: The diaries of Tim Burstall November 1953 to December 1954 edited by Hilary McPhee with Ann Standish

by John Thompson •

April 2012, no. 340

John Thompson reviews 'Memoirs of a Young Bastard' edited by Hilary McPhee with Ann Standish

With Tim Burstall’s death in 2004, Australia lost a key figure in the rebirth of a distinctive and energetic national film industry. While critics disdained his rough ocker populism, Burstall’s Stork (1971), Alvin Purple (1973), and Petersen (1974) were significant commercial successes and demonstrated the viability of a product willing to show Australians to themselves. Burstall argued that a film industry without artistic standards was undesirable, but that so too was an industry cut off from market considerations.

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The Boys: Andrew Frost by

by Mark Gomes •

September 2010, no. 324

Mark Gomes reviews 'The Boys' by Andrew Frost

Suburban crime narratives featured in many Australian films in the 1990s, partly due to the influence of director Rowan Woods’s film The Boys, which drew inspiration from the ‘kitchen sink’ cinema of 1960s Britain. Twelve years after its theatrical release, this seminal film – based on the play by Gordon Graham and written for the screen by Stephen Sewell – remains the best example of an Australian genre that illustrates Marcus Clarke’s conception of ‘weird melancholy’ in the criminal element of our cities’ troubled underclass.

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Romulus, My Father

by Nick Prescott •

July–August 2007, no. 293

Nick Prescott reviews 'Romulus, My Father'

When Raimond Gaita’s memoir Romulus, My Father was published in 1998, the acclaim with which it was greeted was ubiquitous. The book was significant not simply because it was a strikingly revealing personal narrative written by a renowned philosopher, but because it managed to present a story that contained large doses of personal tragedy without rendering the experience of reading it either falsely uplifting or overwhelmingly depressing. While offering vivid portraits of an inconstant, depressive wife and mother, and a self-possessed husband and father struggling with his own sense of self-worth, Romulus, My Father celebrated the power of love and friendship in the most subtle, telling and deeply humane ways.

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Ubu Films: Sydney underground movies 1965-1970 by Peter Mudie

by Juno Gemes •

February–March 1998, no. 198

Juno Gemes reviews 'Ubu Films: Sydney underground movies 1965-1970' by Peter Mudie

Why are we still hooked on the 1960s? As English art historian David Mellor said they were the Utopian Years. Perhaps our dreams and aspirations were anchored there. It is a rather difficult period to review with historical accuracy precisely because it was so rich in ideas and ideals; there was so much happening.

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Book to Film

by Peter Yeldham •

June 1982, no. 41

When the ABC asked me to adapt Roger McDonald’s novel 1915 into a major seven-part serial, I declined. Ray Alchin, producer and head of the ABC’s film studio in Sydney, looked at me with disbelief and asked me to read it again. So I read it again, twice, and thanked him for having the good sense to see its possibilities, and gratefully accepted.

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