Ryan, Mark David (2018) Australian Screen Studies: Pedagogical Uses of Australian Content in Ter- Tiary Education

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Mark David Ryan

Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland, Brisbane,

Australia.

Email: [email protected]

Office no: (07) 31380158

Mailing address:

Film, Screen, Animation

Creative Industries Faculty

Queensland University of Technology

Block Z9, Level 4, Room 403 (Desk 33)

Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove

QLD, 4059, Australia.

Bio:

Mark David Ryan is a Senior Lecturer in Film, Screen and Animation for the Creative

Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology. He has written extensively on

Australian cinema and genre cinema. He is a co-editor of Australian Screen in the 2000s published by Palgrave Macmillan and the Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New

Zealand 2 published by Intellect.

Australian screen studies: Pedagogical uses of Australian content in tertiary education

Mark David Ryan

Abstract

Australian screen studies courses, including ‘Australian Cinema’, ‘Australian National

Cinema’, ‘Australian Film’, and ‘Australian Film and Television’, among others, have long been offered in the creative arts, education, humanities and social sciences in

Australian higher education. At the core of these courses’ curricula is viewing and studying movies, documentaries, and television programs. However, despite recent research into broad curriculum models, there has been limited scholarly examination of pedagogical practices regarding the use of Australian screen content for teaching and learning purposes in these courses. The research investigates three key issues: how coordinators source and deliver Australian content for screening programs; the views of the coordinators in relation to the relevance of an institutional film canon for pedagogy; and the coordinators’ perspectives on the importance of Australian screen history and the role it plays in pedagogy and curricula. The findings are drawn from 10 semi- structured interviews with the principal coordinators of undergraduate Australian screen courses at a range of universities across those states and territories that did offer undergraduate Australian screen courses.

Keywords

Australian cinema, Australian screen studies, pedagogy, national cinema curriculum, film canon

Introduction

Australian screen studies courses, including ‘Australian Cinema’, ‘Australian National

Cinema’, ‘Australian Film’, and ‘Australian Film and Television’, among others, have long been offered in the creative arts, education, humanities and social sciences in Australian higher education. At the core of these courses’ curricula is viewing and studying feature- length movies, documentary and experimental films and television programs, among other forms of content.

A recent study conducted by the author (Ryan, in press), is one of the most detailed and broad-ranging interrogations of contemporary Australian screen studies curricula in

Australian higher education. An exploratory survey of Australian screen courses offered by

Australian universities in 2014, the analysis investigates common approaches to curricula and syllabus, the content of screening programs and the alignment of curricula to recent trends in research in the field. The article argues that despite a growing emphasis on transnational approaches to Australian film and television in research, the study of Australian screen in tertiary education remains firmly embedded in a national cinema curriculum. However, while

Ryan’s (in press) research touches on pedagogy, it is largely focussed on delineating broad curricula models, and thus the analysis provides little insight into how Australian content is used by academics for teaching and learning purposes, or the underpinning pedagogical emphasises of screening programs.

This article, in an attempt to build on Ryan’s (in press) research, examines the pedagogy of Australian content in undergraduate Australian screen studies courses in tertiary education from the perspective of the pedagogues, or the principal coordinators responsible for managing and teaching the courses examined. The research investigates three key issues: how coordinators source and deliver Australian content for screening programs; the views of the coordinators in relation to the relevance of an institutional film canon for pedagogy; and

3 the coordinators’ perspectives on the importance of Australian screen history and the role it plays in pedagogy and curricula. The study’s findings are drawn from 10 semi-structured interviews of 60 to 120 minutes with coordinators who teach courses at an undergraduate level from a sample of Australian universities (see Appendix). This sample was developed to collate a diversity of views from coordinators delivering courses at different types of universities (Group of Eight, Australian Technology Network and regional universities) across the different states. Ryan (in press) found that 31 of the 39 Australian universities studied offer an undergraduate-level Australian screen course of some form. However, the

Northern Territory (Charles Darwin University) and Tasmania (the University of Tasmania) did not offer a standalone undergraduate Australian screen course at the time of the study.

Using this research as a reference point, coordinators were randomly selected and contacted from universities in those states that did offer undergraduate Australian screen courses across a range of Group of Eight, Australian Technology Network and regional universities.1

Interviews were conducted between April and June 2016 by skype or telephone, and interviewees were contacted by email where clarification or further information was required.

In terms of definitions, this research uses the term ‘Australian screen studies’ to refer to the study of the Australian screen content in its various forms including movies, documentaries and television content. Yet, it is important to note that ‘Australian cinema’ and

‘Australian film’, and by implication the feature film, have long held a privileged position in both curricula and research in terms of the study of Australian screen content. The term

‘Australian film studies’ is used in this study when directly discussing Australian cinema and feature film.

The article frames the alignment between Australian screen studies research and the curriculum, and delineates common approaches to curriculum. The article then analyses pedagogical practices around sourcing and screening Australian content; interrogates how

4 coordinators negotiate and challenge the concept of an Australian screen canon; and examines issues that arise in terms of teaching Australian screen history.

Finding alignment: Research and the curriculum in Australian film studies

In Australia, film studies emerged as an academic field of enquiry during the first half of the

1970s (King, Verevis, & Williams, 2013, p. 5). For much of the next three decades, a national cinema paradigm became a dominant conceptual framework for understanding Australian cinema. As Deb Verhoeven (2014, p. 152) asserts, at the core of Australian film studies has been ‘how the “Australian” in Australian cinema should be distinguished, both in the sense of how it can be differentiated from other national cinemas and how it contributes to abiding discourses of Australian excellence and “goodness”’. For Kate Bowles (2007, p. 245), the national cinema agenda, for both research and the curriculum, has typically privileged the production industry, the policy settings that foster and shape production and the films produced.

Yet since as early as the late 1980s, a national cinema paradigm has been problematised as a unifying logic for understanding Australian cinema (Dermody & Jacka,

1988, pp. 117–130), due in part to the increasing internationalisation of the production sector and the limitations inherent in attempting to frame representational issues and cultural diversity within the confines of national constructs. Although national cinema remained an influential paradigm for much of the 1990s and some of the 2000s, as Ben Goldsmith (2010) observes, Australian film and television production has undergone a significant international turn since 2000, leading to the growth of ‘Australian-international’ films that challenge traditional notions of national cultural production. Mao’s Last Dancer (2009), for example, was filmed in Australia, China and the United States (US), had a mixed national and international crew and a largely international cast and revolved around a story set in China

5 and the US. To account for the growth in Australian-international production, recent scholarship proposes new ways of thinking about Australian film and television that account for the porous nature of national cultural boundaries, globally dispersed production flows and contingent relational networks between Australian cinema and other international cinemas

(Danks & Verevis, 2010; Davis, Gibson, & Moore, 2014; Goldsmith, 2010; Goldsmith,

Ward, & O’Regan, 2010; Mills, 2009). This research has prompted a focus on examining overseas movies filmed in Australia, international movies that imagine Australia from afar, transnational movies that have some form of Australian production input ‘or even “foreign” films that feature significant Australian personnel’ (Danks & Verevis, 2010, p. 195).

However, Australian film studies curriculum is a thin strand of research in current literature. To date, little has been written on transnational approaches to Australian screen studies curriculum for undergraduate teaching. For Adrian Martin (1992), writing in the

1990s, an overlap between film and cultural studies, and the increasing popularity of political economy analysis, led to a decline in deep textual analysis of Australian film and television programs. More recently, scholars have advocated shifts in the foci of research and the curriculum, away from nationally defined and production-centred enquiry towards audience- oriented accounts of Australian cinema (Bowles, 2007) and comparative analysis founded on the principle of ‘“world quality”’ (Martin, 2010, p.17).

As previously mentioned, Ryan’s (in press) survey of how Australian screen courses are taught at an undergraduate level in national universities is a detailed examination of contemporary curriculum models. The study contends that there is no single approach to

Australian screen studies curriculum, nor a common syllabus or widely adopted textbooks.

For Ryan (in press), the undergraduate study of Australian screen is resolutely embedded within a national cinema curriculum – confirming similar observations made by Bowles’

(2007) – and courses are overwhelmingly focused on studying Australian cinema in terms of

6 its distinctiveness as a national cinema and the attendant discourses that have long dominated its evaluation. Furthermore, history is central to the curriculum: although most courses explored contemporary issues, only a handful focused solely on contemporary film and television content. Ryan (in press) identifies three common approaches to the curriculum:

1. a historical chronology of Australian cinema

2. a textual-dominant approach structured around a key film studied each week

3. key discourses of Australian cinema and critical issues.

The first approach is principally concerned with providing a historical chronology of

Australian cinema, from the silent era to contemporary developments, but depending on the period of study (for example, the 1970s revival) it also allows for the examination of industry, policy and textual issues. The second approach privileges textual, thematic and ideological analysis via an in-depth analysis of a key film each week, although again, it enables the investigation of complementary issues such as history, industry and policy. A third, and most common, approach ‘revolves around teaching according to a combination of key discourses central to understanding Australia cinema’ (the larrikin, and landscape and national identity, among many others) and using critical approaches (such as feminism, queer theory or race/ethnicity for example) as lens for analysing Australian content. This method is also the most varied. In addition to examining screen content with respect to Australian cinema discourses and critical theory, some courses characterised by this approach also incorporate discrete modules of study dedicated to the examination of specific film genres

(including comedy, crime and Indigenous film) and weeks of skills-based study focussed on developing students’ critical writing and research skills.

Contextualising Australian screen courses

Australian screen studies courses are shaped by ‘the type of degree a particular subject is embedded in, as well as the overarching philosophy of the faculty or department it is housed within’, but without widely adopted curriculum models, a curriculum is shaped by ‘a diverse range of largely undocumented approaches informed ostensibly by a unit coordinator’s own research activities, experience and surveys of the field’ (Ryan, in press). Unsurprisingly, then, when a course changes ‘ownership’ between coordinators, it is typically realigned to the incoming coordinators’ expertise, or embedded into the curricula of other courses. Allison

Craven (personal communication, 13 April 2016) from James Cook University, for example, inherited the course ‘The Land and its Legends in Australian Cinema’ (CN2012) – the study of landscape cinema from The Squatter’s Daughter (1933) to Japanese Story (2003) – after the course’s previous coordinator retired. Discontinuing the course, elements of the curriculum were integrated into Craven’s existing course ‘Regional Features: Place, Location,

Australia and Asia in the Cinema’ (CN2205) and this became the primary subject for the study of Australian screen content, one that examines Australian cinema as one of several cinemas in the Asian region. Between 2011 and 2015, Margot Nash (personal communication, 2 June 2016) taught ‘Australian Film’ (58321) at the University of

Technology Sydney, a course structured around alternative histories and oppositional filmmaking, including personal essay, women’s, experimental and Indigenous films. Nash is a pioneer feminist, activist and staunchly independent Australian filmmaker, and it thus follows that she is ‘not so interested in mainstream history’ but rather ‘what hasn’t been written, what’s been left out and why’. Her lecture titled ‘Sex, drugs and rock and roll’, for example, revolved around ‘Pure Shit [1975], a film initially banned by Australia’s chief film censor of the time [R. J. Prowse], and, the personal essay documentary In This Life’s Body

(1984) by avant-garde filmmaker Corinne Cantrill – films that normally wouldn’t get screened in Australian film history classes’. However, while Nash was on a leave of absence

8 from teaching to work on her feature-length documentary The Silences in 2015, the undergraduate Bachelor of Communication degree offered by the University of Technology

Sydney was restructured; when she ‘came back in 2015 [“Australian Film”] had been discontinued’. As both of these examples suggest, individual coordinators are important champions, not only for the particular ideological emphasis a course might have, but also ultimately for that course’s justification in a degree program.

The discontinuation of Nash’s course may also be symptomatic of a contraction in the number of Australian screen studies courses offered by Australian universities in recent years. On the one hand, some Australian screen studies courses are offered on a rotating, rather than an annual, basis in their respective degrees, and Lesley Speed’s ‘Australian

Cinema’ (FLMOL1001) offered by Federation University, for example, is offered to students on ‘a 3 year rotation’ (personal communication, 6 April 2016). Consequently, the number of

Australian screen courses offered by Australian universities in any given year may, to an extent, fluctuate. On the other hand, a number of courses that were on offer in degree programs in 2014 have since been discontinued. Between 2013 and 2015, in addition to

Nash’s course, four courses – La Trobe University’s ‘Australian Cinema’ (CAC2/3), Flinders

University’s ‘Australian Cinema’ (SCME2101), Queensland University of Technology’s

‘Australian Film and Television’ (KPB212) and Newcastle University’s ‘The Australian

Cinema’ (FILM3020) – were either discontinued as standalone ‘film’/‘film and television’ subjects or were not offered in their respective course structure for 2015 (Ryan, in press). In the case of the first three, each of these subjects were ultimately dropped from their degree and were embedded into the curricula of more broadly conceived screen / media studies courses (Ryan in, press). Yet, whether this contraction is indicative of the ‘unstable and shifting terrain’ on which Australian film studies in particular has always existed in

Australian universities (Kouvaros, 1997, p. 80), or whether this is evidence that the

Australian film and television industries are increasingly regarded as less distinct, and more embedded, industry practices (see Verhoeven, 2014, p.152) in terms of a continuum of digital media content production (online, mobile and social media content among others) as a result of digital disruption, is an issue that requires further investigation.

Screenings and teaching practices: sourcing and curating content

Teaching and learning for Australian screen studies courses are typically structured around the following: a one- to two-hour lecture; an in-class screening of generally an hour and a half, or two hours; a tutorial; and out-of-class viewings and, in some cases, an expectation that students will attend film festivals or other relevant screen culture events. The courses examined screened a mixture of feature-length movies and documentary films, television programs and series, and to lesser extent short-form content such as short films, experimental films, documentaries and webisodes. Feature-length movies were by far the most dominant form of content set as the ‘text’ for weekly in-class screenings. Short-form content was rarely screened as the in-class text, though it was frequently used for instructional demonstrations during lectures and tutorial activities.

Recent research suggests that Australian university libraries’ licensing of specialist education VOD streaming services such as Kanopy that offer access to large catalogues of movies, television content and documentary film for teaching and learning, is a growing but fledgling area of higher education (Cleary, Humphrey, & Bates, 2014). In a recent report by

Cunningham et al (2016) detailing the findings of one of the most comprehensive studies of the distribution and use of screen content in education in Australia (primary, secondary and to lesser extent tertiary education), the authors argue that ‘just as traditional entertainment platforms, particularly broadcast television, cinema and DVD are challenged by new online services, so too traditional modes of distributing and accessing screen content in education

10 are being disrupted by new online services’ (1). Cunningham et al (2016) argue that the ubiquity of digital technologies, the ease in which students and educators can access an extensive range of content online, and the currency of online pedagogies – such as ‘blended learning’ (see Garrison and Kanuka, 2004) or ‘flipping the classroom’ (see O'Flaherty and

Phillips, 2015) that mix face-to-face and online learning – are driving educational demand for, and uses of, screen content in Australian education (pp.1-6). As Kerry Shepard (2003, p.296) observes, before the advent of video streaming, ‘traditionally video has been shown to learners using a Video Cassette, Video Cassette Recorder (VCR)’, or more recently a DVD and DVD player, ‘and television or projector and screen’. Yet the online delivery of long- form content via VOD in higher education has numerous benefits for learning, benefits that cannot be easily replicated by the conventional mode of delivery described above, and some of these include: the ease of access for both teachers and learners; content is available on- demand and as a result learning is not confined to university campuses affording greater flexibility in the learning experience; students have greater control and choice over the content they watch (Hartsell and Yuen, 2006, pp. 36-37; Thomson, Bridgstock and Willems,

2014); and content can be watched on multiple occasions ‘creating the ability for students to self-pace their learning’ (Hartsell and Yuen, 2006, pp. 36-37).

Nonetheless, most of the courses examined featured weekly in-class screenings, and only two delivered the key weekly texts using out-of-class screenings by video-on-demand

(VOD). Interviewees for this study indicated that institutional pressures to consider alternative modes of delivery for in-class screenings, such as VOD, included a paucity of timetable scheduling, a push for students to watch feature-length screenings outside class time, academic workload considerations in terms of reducing in-class teaching time and poor student attendance at screenings. There was a general consensus that other general film studies courses, including standalone ‘documentary film’, ‘introduction to film analysis’ and

‘international cinema’ courses, were losing, or had already lost, designated in-class screenings within their respective institutions, as coordinators had been unable to successfully justify such large blocks of class time in a university’s timetable. However, the interviewees generally felt that their Australian screen course was not under the same pressure to remove in-class screenings. This suggests that in-class screenings, for those courses studied, are accepted institutionally as being critical to the pedagogy of Australian screen studies courses although this is not the case for all screen studies subjects in their broader degree programs.

Coordinators justified the importance of in-class screenings in three ways:

1. Screenings are central to the curriculum, assessment and associated learning

activities;

2. Screenings facilitate an understanding of the social practice of cinema viewing and

the aesthetics of cinematic presentation; and

3. Screenings are the best way to ensure that as many students as possible watch the

set movies.

At most Australian universities, coordinators who use screen content for teaching and learning have access to various forms of content delivery, including: in-class screenings of physical DVDs/Blu-rays housed in the library’s audiovisual collection; specialist education

VOD streaming services, such as Kanopy, EduTV and ClickView; institutional audiovisual repositories that provide access to off-air recordings of television content via on-demand video streaming (for example, Queensland University of Technology’s Media Warehouse); and YouTube (see Cleary, Humphrey, & Bates, 2014; Cunningham et al., 2016). From the interviews for this study, the most established practice for in-class screenings that generally occurred in lecture theatres was the projection of DVDs or Blu-ray discs borrowed from the university’s DVD collection, and supplemented by the screening of titles from a coordinator’s personal audiovisual collection. Principal reasons for a coordinator’s use of

12 personal DVDs/Blu-rays were convenience and the fact that library discs can be damaged from use, which can cause problems during screenings. As long as screenings are not recorded or reproduced, Australian copyright law allows university lecturers to screen personal DVD/Blu-rays in a private (closed to the general public) classroom for educational instruction (Commonwealth of Australia, 1968).

From the courses examined, VOD services were often used to facilitate out-of-class viewings to supplement in-class viewings, yet the image quality of off-air recordings available in institutional repositories and, to lesser extent, the quality of content available in the aforementioned specialist education streaming services, can vary greatly; consequently, physical DVD/Blu-ray discs provide coordinators with the most failsafe way of achieving the highest-quality in-class screenings. YouTube, though widely employed to show short clips for demonstrations or analytical exercises, was rarely used to screen feature-length content for in-class screenings. The course ‘Australian Cinema’ (MSTU2006) taught by Huw

Walmsley-Evans in 2014 at the University of Queensland is one example of a course that used YouTube to deliver recommended feature films on-demand. A course that charts the history of Australian cinema, the teaching team and a UQ Librarian worked with the National

Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) ‘to make available via … YouTube some of those old and rare early Australian films from the first several decades of the Australian cinema’ including

‘early sound era and Ken Hall films’ (personal communication, 6 April 2016).

Some coordinators went to extraordinary lengths to acquire content for screenings.

Stephen Gaunson (personal communication, 6 April 2016), for example, worked with RMIT

University librarians to select and license 16 mm and 35 mm prints for weekly screenings from the NFSA and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). Nash (personal communication, 2 June 2016) sourced film prints that were unavailable from the NFSA or other collecting institutions directly from filmmakers in her professional network. After

13 negotiating the terms of use for this content, the University of Technology Sydney’s library digitised selected titles for the institutional collection and made them available as resources for teaching and learning. Mike Walsh (personal communication, 11 April 2016) from

Flinders University ‘inherited’ and developed an Australian cinema course around ‘the South

Australian Film and Video library’, comprising a collection of ‘16 mm films including Film

Australia and Commonwealth Film Unit films going back to the 1940s’. To facilitate learning in relation to exhibition, students curated and projected film prints for weekly in-class screenings.

Teaching and learning in the courses examined are facilitated through a combination of ‘traditional’ modes of delivery for in-class screenings and VOD to support out-of-class viewings. The practice of projecting the highest possible quality image on a large screen in a university lecture hall, and in some cases purpose-built cinema theatres, places an emphasis on the importance of film aesthetics and the viewing experience of cinema, and therefore concerns that have long been central to film studies. It also suggests that cinema presentation and the social experience of cinema, for some of the coordinators interviewed, remain important conditions for learning that on-demand viewing on mobile devices and small screens do not necessarily replicate.

Australian screen studies: An institutional canon?

Australian Screen Classics, a short monograph series published by Currency Press that examines prominent movies from the original Mad Max trilogy (1979; 1981; 1985) to The

Piano (1993) – written by Adrian Martin (2003) and Gail Jones (2007), respectively – could be regarded as canon forming, since it validates, and ascribes ‘classic’ status to, certain texts over others. Nevertheless, the concept of an Australian film (and television) canon is rarely discussed in Australian film studies. As Martin has argued, unlike academic film studies in

14 the US, which has been criticised for its predilection towards canonical debate, in the

Australian context, ‘the problem is more one of finding common ground for debate between any two scholars as they burn off down their own, obsessive roads’ (1992, pp. 9–10). In international screen studies, the concept of a ‘film canon’ is a highly contested critical category, with little consensus on whether canons are appropriate for academic screen studies and the criteria that should define them. For Paul Schrader (2006, p. 35), ‘Not only is there no agreement about what a canon should include, there’s no agreement about whether there should be canons at all … Yet de facto film canons exist—in abundance’. As Patrick Fuery and Nick Mansfield (2000, p. 19) observe, ‘any definition of the canon … works on assumptions of value, cultural acceptance of the criteria for inclusion and exclusion of texts and the certainty of the elements that constitute it’. Film canons are therefore judgements of intrinsic quality based on notions of good/bad, cinematic/non-cinematic, elitist/popular and art/non-art (Fuery & Mansfield, 2000, pp. 19‒20).

In terms of Australian features films, there is no single accepted canon of ‘Australian cinema’ screened in higher education in Australian screen studies (Ryan, in press). From the interviews, coordinators felt that there are ‘classic’ Australian movies that students must watch in any study of Australian screen; their examples included The Sentimental Bloke

(1919), Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Gallipoli (1981). As Ryan (in press) identifies, and as illustrated in Table 1, a small number of films are commonly found on curriculum lists for Australian screen courses in higher education. Nevertheless, screening programs for each course are dynamic, regularly revised and greatly varied. Most screenings are characterised by what could be regarded as Australian textual identifiers (character types, dialogue, themes, plotlines, mise en scene and so on), or texts easily read within a national cinema framework

(Ryan, in press). When interviewees for this study were asked what constitutes an Australian classic, they generally agreed that Australian Film Commission-genre movies (Dermody &

Jacka, 1988, pp. 28‒38), or movies that depict iconic images of national identity from the

1970s and 1980s, are central to classic Australian cinema. However, as with debates in canon criticism more broadly, there was little agreement on what constitutes an institutional canon of Australian film, or the criteria by which one should be judged. Walmsley-Evans (personal communication, 6 April 2016), who taught Australian cinema at UQ in 2014, stressed the importance of studying Australian movies of the highest aesthetic and technical quality, or what he called ‘film as film’. He stated that while some courses may screen popular

Australian movies such as Kenny (2006) to discuss the representation of masculinity or the larrikin, films of this sort would not appear in his syllabus. For Walmsley-Evans, this is because:

It’s not a good film. So in that sense there is a sense of ‘capital C’ cinema about

Australian film. Because we know that other approach, the more socio-cultural

approach doesn’t … necessarily care for pro-filmic values and will get taught

elsewhere in units or courses in ‘Australian Studies’, ‘Cultural Studies’ or

‘Gender Studies’ at The University of Queensland. These ‘media/cultural studies’

approaches to Australian cinema allow us to be more pro-filmic with our offering

in the film department.

Yet for other interviewees, delimiting screenings to films of the highest aesthetic quality was less of a determining factor for a film’s selection; rather, a crucial issue that informed their screening decisions, as Walmsley-Evans alluded to, was how well movies aligned with relevant cultural and national cinema discourses discussed in the curriculum.

Coordinators also screened films that contrasted with the aesthetics or representational concerns of ‘classic Australian cinema’. Jane Mills from the University of New South Wales and Lesley Speed from Federation University blended the study of canonical, genre and cult films. For Mills (personal communication, 12 April 2016):

I do have a couple of main themes running through the course, one of which is

the classic and the canon. What do we mean by these terms? Because I’m

interested in ideas about taste … And so, what is a classic? Why is it a classic?

What is the canon? Whose canon? Can the canon include popular genre films?

For Speed (personal communication, 6 April 2016), as illustrated in Table 2, ‘I think in terms of teaching the canon, I try to include some canonical [films]’ and some films ‘that are bad taste or … a mixture in terms of genre and in terms of period’. Peter Kirkpatrick (personal communication, 15 May 2016) from the University of Sydney expressed similar ideas: ‘I’m more interested in films as cultural history. So, yes, I aim to include what might be called

‘keynote’ films by well-known directors, as well as some other, less arthouse movies’. For

Speed, what is critically important is how classic films are taught:

It’s possible to teach a canonical film like Picnic at Hanging Rock … from

alternative perspectives … [the students] are actually much more interested in the

gothic side of that film, and also the queer angle of Picnic at Hanging Rock,

which is possibly a kind of a non-canonical reading on what is … one of the

important films in the canon.

Mike Walsh (personal communication, 11 April 2016) from Flinders University, on the other hand, rejected the idea of an Australian cinema cannon:

In some ways I think Australian cinema has always existed in the margins of cinema

culture in this country. And so I’m not quite sure that I’d be able to identify a canon

that would be widely, or even generally, agreed upon … And certainly, I’m not sure

that there is anything like a canon that I would say I had to teach.

In describing his own approach to teaching Australian cinema and how this informs the movies he shows in class, Walsh outlines that:

The first part of [my Australian film course] is chronological [and thus historical].

There’s also a part of it which might be genre based … and finally, I typically ended

with [weeks of study] that stresses localism [South Australian film production] and I

always end up with the idea of not so much a national cinema but a federal cinema.

Overall, the interviews suggest that there are key movies that are screened across

Australian screen studies courses and the politics of taste plays an important role in informing screening programs. In the courses examined, even though curricula for

Australian screen studies remains embedded in a national cinema paradigm the conceptualisation of Australian cinema as a national cinema is contested and varied.

Australian screen content and screen history

It is common for students to commence studying Australian screen with limited prior knowledge of the subject, and either a negative or ambivalent attitude towards Australian film and television content. The interviewees widely agreed that a common statement from many students when they first began a course was that ‘they don’t watch Australian film and television’. Consequently, encouraging student engagement with Australian content inside and outside the classroom is a pedagogical priority, and coordinators attempt to examine films and television programs that they believe will be the most engaging for students within the confines of curricula and the respective course’s learning objectives.

At the same time, many of the coordinators interviewed for this research viewed teaching screen history as critical to learning and the curriculum in terms of the following: introducing students to key films that they will not otherwise have seen; framing contemporary films within an understanding of historically informed industry, policy and cultural contexts; and an important way for students to examine questions about Australian culture and national identity. However, the interviewees unanimously felt that teaching

Australian screen history to undergraduate students was problematic, and a major pedagogical challenge. Indeed, a consistent theme in the interviews and an explicit point made by a number of interviewees was that students have little desire to watch historical films, including content released more than 15 years ago.

One issue raised was the difficulty of teaching Australian film history to both domestic and international students who may have a minimal general understanding of the nation’s history. For Susan Thwaites (personal communication, 7 April 2016) at the

University of Canberra:

The very first year I taught the subject it was a disaster in that I basically was

teaching Australian history. [Students] didn’t know about the ‘White Australia

policy’, they didn’t know … the more in-depth aspects of the stolen generation.

They didn’t know … anything to do with multicultural policies and why we have

them.

In a similar vein, Michael McCall (personal communication, 4 May 2016) from the

University of Notre Dame observed that the nation’s history, ‘as I understand it, is taught in

[the early years of high school] and by the time a student gets to the second year of university they don’t really remember it’. For Gaunson (personal communication, 6 April 2016) at

RMIT, the problem was trying to show ‘the history of Australian cinema in 12 weeks’. ‘I found it was too much for them, because they have no understanding of the history of

Australian cinema … And it was almost like I was rushing through [the history] and no one was really comprehending what was going on’.

Unlike any of the other subjects examined for this study, Stephen Gaunson’s course

‘Australian Cinema’ (COMM1033) offered by RMIT is focused entirely on the study of contemporary Australian films released largely within in the last 10 years (see Table 3).

A core reason for the focus on recent Australian screen is that the texts, and the contexts in which they are discussed, are more familiar and relatable for students. The first year Stephen taught the subject, curriculum revolved around Australian cinema history, and students ultimately lacked any real engagement with the texts studied. Moreover, students were often reluctant to express opinions on a ‘classic’ film like The Sentimental Bloke because ‘They feel like, “I'm sure there's a cultural context there that I'm not understanding”’ (personal communication, 6 April 2016). Peter Kirkpatrick who coordinates the course ‘Australian

Stage & Screen’ (ASLT2616) for the University of Sydney described similar experiences.

Kirkpatrick has taught the subject ‘Australian Stage and Screen’ since 2008 in alternating years, and the films screened in the subject have changed dramatically over time. When Peter first began teaching the subject the focus was primarily on Australian drama and Australian films adapted from Australian novels and plays. Peter prescribed The Sentimental Bloke as a required screening in 2010, but received a negative response from students. For Kirkpatrick:

I would love to teach silent films and the old Cinesound [On Our Selection (1932) and

The Squatter's Daughter (1933)] and Efftee [Studios] features [The Sentimental

Bloke], but my experience has been that students don’t have sufficient historical

awareness to properly grasp them unless you dedicate more time to cultural and

industrial history that can be set aside in a generalist unit like this.

As a result, the films he screens are primarily from the late-1960s Australian film revival onward. However, overall the aim of the unit is to present a history of Australian cinema, and to examine issues such as gender and race by studying the television series Redfern Now

(2012) and the movie Samson and Delilah (2009) among others. The subject also screens movies requested by students. The Castle (1997), for example, was reintroduced in 2016 because of student demand for the film, as was the case for Redfern Now.

Conversely, there were very different views of screen history from coordinators teaching in departments with a strong emphasis on the humanities. For Walmsley-Evans, coordinating ‘Australian Cinema’ (MSTU2006) at the University of Queensland in 2014, the course examined the entire history of Australian cinema, from the early 1900s to contemporary cinema, ‘and the reason that we did that was because we felt like there was too much of a focus on the New Wave and Post-New Wave [cinema] in previous iterations of the subject and not enough of the sense of the long history of the Australian cinema’ (personal communication, 6 April 2016). Furthermore, the subject was redeveloped that year to complement the offering of ‘a new film history subject … So there was a sense of trying to make Australian cinema complementary to an emerging historical focus [elsewhere in the degree]… and that had a knock-on effect for programming’ (personal communication, 6

April 2016). Thus, in contrast to the examples above, the screening program in 2014 for this course was heavily focused on historical films.

Conclusion

This article has examined some of the dynamic pedagogical practices regarding the use of screen content in Australian screen studies courses; by doing so, it has attempted to build on

Ryan’s (in press) recent examination of national curriculum models as well as beginning a conversation about how Australian film and television content is used for teaching and learning purposes in Australian screen studies in tertiary education. While course coordinators have access to a greater range of delivery modes for screen content (both in class and on demand) than ever before, and institutional pressures exist to use VOD to enhance learning environments, the interviewees were less concerned with online pedagogical design, from flipping the classroom to blended learning, than they were with improving student engagement with Australian content and ensuring that cinematic

21 presentation and the experience of cinema viewing remain a central part of the learning experience despite the ubiquity of online platforms and mobile devices for content delivery.

There is no established institutional canon of Australian film (and television) in tertiary education, and yet it is widely agreed that there are canonical films, and coordinators scrutinise, but also challenge, conventional understandings of Australian cinema in relation to national identity, taste and genre. For some coordinators, teaching screen history remains critical to Australian screen studies. Yet for others, despite the long-standing centrality of screen history in curricula, historical approaches to teaching and learning are under pressure in the current institutional environment, and students are increasingly resistant to historical content and contexts. Although this study has attempted to provide insight into the pedagogy of Australian content in Australian screen studies, a number of critical issues remain unaddressed, and questions regarding how, and the extent to which, Australian film and television content is embedded in the curricula of other university courses beyond screen studies, and issues pertaining to pedagogical innovation in Australian screen studies require further investigation.

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges Dr. Kayleigh Murphy, from Queensland University of Technology, for her project management during the interview process.

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Appendix: Australian screen studies coordinators interviewed Coordinator Course University State Allison Craven Regional Features: Place, James Cook University Qld Location, Australian and Asia in Cinema (CN2205) Stephen Gaunson Australian Cinema RMIT Vic (COMM1033) Peter Kirkpatrick Australian Stage and University of Sydney NSW Screen (ASLT2616) Michael McCall Australian Cinema University of Notre WA (CO363) Dame Jane Mills Australian Cinema University of New South NSW (ARTS2062) Wales Margot Nash Australian Film (58321) University of NSW Technology Sydney Lesley Speed Australian Cinema Federation University Vic (FLMOL1001) Susan Thwaites Australian National University of Canberra ACT Cinema (9016.2) Huw Walmsley- Australian Cinema University of Queensland Qld Evans (MSTU2006) and SAE Institute Mike Walsh Australian/Indigenous Flinders University SA Media (SCME2101)

Table 1: Australian cinema screenings Screened in four or  The Sentimental Bloke (1919)—six courses more courses  Gallipoli (1981)—five  Jedda (1955)—five  Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)—four  They’re a Weird Mob (1966)—four Screened in three  The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972) courses  Australia (2008)  Wake in Fright (1971)  Not Quite Hollywood (2008)  Samson and Delilah (2009)  The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)  Mad Max (1979)  The Castle (1997)  The Proposition (2005)  Lantana (2001)  Newsfront (1977)  Ten Canoes (2006) Screened in two  Bedevil (1993) courses  The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)  Muriel’s Wedding (1994)  Breaker Morant (1980)  Radiance (1998)  My Tehran for Sale (2009)  Kenny (2006)  East West 101 ( 2007–2011)  Underbelly (2008–2013)  One Night the Moon (2001)  My Brilliant Career (1979)  Kath & Kim (2002–2007)  The Boys (1998)

Source: Ryan, M. D. (in press). Australian cinema studies: How the subject is taught in Australian universities. The Journal of Australian Studies, 41(4).

Table 2: ‘Australian Cinema’ (FLMOL1001), Federation University (2015) Week Lecture Schedule and Content Breakdown 1 Introduction; early film and the larrikin type—The Sentimental Bloke (1919) 2 Diggers on film; narrative propaganda—Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940) 3 International filmmaking in Australia after World War Two—They’re a Weird Mob (1966) 4 The Australian film industry’s revival: period film—Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) 5 Australian film in the international market—Crocodile Dundee (1986) 6 Break 7 Suburbia and the family—Muriel’s Wedding (1994) 8 Australian Cinema after Mabo—Yolngu Boy (2001) 9 Comedian comedy and low humour—Kenny (2006) 10 Transnational Australian film—Moulin Rouge! (2001) 11 Bushranger film—The Proposition (2005) 12 Television comedy and social identity—Summer Heights High (2007‒2008)

Table 3: ‘Australian Cinema’ (COMM1033), RMIT (2015) Week Lecture Schedule and Content Breakdown 1. What is an Australian film? – Finding Nemo (2003) 2. Outwardly Australia – The Sapphires (2012) 3. Australian films for China – 33 Postcards (2011) 4. The problems of ‘International’ Australian stories: Finding local audiences – Balibo (2009) 5. Inflated budgets and poor box office: A case for Robert Connelly’s ‘White Paper’ – Netherland Dwarf (2008) and The Rover (2014) 6. CinemaPlus: Robert Connolly’s event screening – The Turning (2013) 7. Test screenings and young audiences – Tomorrow, When the War Began (2010) 8. Finding the wide audience: Film festivals and audience response – Stranded (2011) and Samson and Delilah (2014) 9. Genre markets and marketing – Monster (2005) and The Babadook (2014) 10. Watching Australian films on the small screen – The Mule (2014) 11. Australian hit: When is a film successful? – Mystery Road (2014) 12. Next generation filmmaking – Blue-Tongue shorts and Lake Mungo (2008)

1 Interviews were ultimately conducted with coordinators of courses from three New South Wales (NSW) universities, two in Victoria (VIC), two in Queensland (QLD), one in South Australia (SA), one in Western Australia (WA) and one in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).