Volume 16: Filmmakers on Filmmaking (2022)
Editorial
In this volume, we feature essays by filmmakers that contextualise their creative process. The idea of filmmakers' essays is presented as a re-examination of the work from their point of view. It enables a greater perspective on the ideas behind the filmworks, and allows for extended reflection on their implications and collaboration between filmmakers.
Articles
Inscribing and encoding: the point of media-making
Daniel Binns
Building on the recent embodied turn in screen production research, and taking inspiration from core ideas of the new materialists, this experimental piece unfolds in two parts. Examining where the maker fits in the nebula of media texts, tools, and technologies.
The making of the Archival Futures of Outer Space Film Quartet
Ceridwen Dovey and Rowena Potts
Discover the creative process behind the film, where archival footage, experimental film and visual anthropology come together to explore a poetic reflection of nature, memory and the possibilities of imagining new futures.
Remix as a practice of listening
Socorro Cifuentes
This project reimagines remix as a practice of political listening. Instead of looking to popular culture as its primary frame of reference, it turns to histories of socio-political resistance, engaging with the ideas, organisational practices, and strategies of activists and collectives to understand remix as a tool for solidarity, resistance, and political action.
Consider the roadside picnic place
Rob Nugent
In the short film Picnic Places, roadside infrastructure is cast as an assemblage of objects 'containing multitudes', providing an alternative consideration of these locations. They are seen as somewhere other than a place to stop and stretch on a long Australian road journey. This article explores the reflections from the making of the film.
The ideological decay and theoretical stagnation of Chinese journalism
Chengju Huang
The relationship between journalism and political power remains a defining feature of China's media landscape. This study critiques the 'Marxist view of journalism' and argues it reinforces longstanding state control in a changing media environment, while offering suggestions on how the policy may be redeveloped.
Redirecting surveillance capitalism: Facebook and Australia's news media bargaining code
Binoy Kampmark
When Facebook blocked news across Australia, it exposed a global struggle over power, profit and public interest. Explore how the News Media Bargaining Code reshaped the relationship between governments, digital platforms and news media.
Postgraduate research
The Black Legend: postmodernity, the Latin American politique and cinema's role in historical revisionism
Jason K. Foster
Whose version of history becomes accepted as truth? Looking at the film Black Legend and its representation in cinema, this article examines how changing interpretations of Spanish colonialism continue to shape cultural and national identities, and influence political power.
Race in the Australian media: present approaches and opportunities for change
Graeme Karstaedt
Race shapes how stories are told, whose voices are heard and how communities are represented in Australian media. This article examines current approaches to reporting on race and highlights opportunities for more inclusive journalism.
Media monitor
Australian Media Policy Under Albanese's Labor Party
In the aftermath of the 2022 Australian Federal election, 'the big fail' of the Murdoch media to have any impact on the result has reignited questions about the ongoing influence of global independent news organisations. Counterintuitively, the election outcome challenged News Corp's well-documented stranglehold on the news agenda. So how might we explain this situation?
Book reviews
The Philosophy of Modern Song
Bob Dylan offers his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music. It contains over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyses what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal.
Greetings from Trumpland
From interviews with the 'forgotten people' who elected a renegade anti-politician, to those who felt the wrath of Trump's no-holds-barred leadership, this book gives an inside look at the historic presidency that shook up the global order, and an insightful examination of how America, and the world, faces the future.
Not Now, Not Ever
On 9 October 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard stood up and made all present in Parliament House that day pay attention – and left many of them squirming in their seats. In this book, Julia Gillard explores the roadmap for the future with next-generation feminists Sally Scales, Chanel Contos and Caitlin Figueiredo, motivating us with that rallying cry: Not now, not ever!
Expanded Visions: A New Anthropology of the Moving Image
This book argues for a new anthropology of the moving image, bringing together an important range of essays on time-based media in the contemporary arts. It builds on recent attempts to develop more experimental formats and engages with debates on epistemologies of ethnography, relational aesthetics, materiality, sensory ethnography, and observational and participatory cinema.