Diasporas of Australian Cinema

Simpson Diasporas | of Australian Murawska Diasporas | Cinema Lambert of Australian Catherine Simpson Renata Murawska Anthony Lambert Cinema Diasporas of Australian Cinema of Australian Diasporas Catherine Simpson Diasporas of Australian Cinema is the first volume to Catherine Simpson teaches Film, Renata Murawska focus exclusively on diasporic hybridity and cultural Media, and convenes the Honours diversity in Australian film-making over the past program at Macquarie University, Anthony Lambert century. Topics include post-war documentaries Sydney. and migration, Asian-Australian subjectivity, cross- cultural romance, ‘wogsploitation’ comedy, and Renata Murawska lectures in Film, post-ethnic cinema. This collection also provides a Media and Public Relations at useful reference text for scholars of Australian film Macquarie University, Sydney. and cultural studies, with material on contemporary film-making and pre-World War II cinema. Containing Anthony Lambert is a lecturer in previously unpublished articles by some of the most Critical and Cultural Studies at recognised experts on Australian cinema, the book Macquarie University, Sydney. is a vital contribution to the burgeoning international interest in diasporic cinemas. ‘Bold and innovative... The essays in this book illustrate how the struggle for the redefinition and redeployment of these ideas, ideals and realities plays out on screen in a white-settler colony under erasure through difference.’ Professor Toby Miller, Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. ISBN 978-1-84150-197-0 00 9 781841 501970 intellect | www.intellectbooks.com Diasporas of Australian Cinema Dedication This book is dedicated to those we have lost: Christine Elizabeth Jones (1954–2008) Bernadette Anne Carstein (1954–2007) And those we have gained: Appolonia Gigi Bernard (27 March 2008) Diasporas of Australian Cinema Edited by Catherine Simpson, Renata Murawska and Anthony Lambert ^ciZaaZXi7g^hida!J@8]^XV\d!JH6 First published in the UK in 2009 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2009 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2009 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Sue Jarvis Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire ISBN 978-1-84150-197-0 EISBN 978-1-84150-336-3 Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta. CONTENTS Acknowledgements 7 Preface: Diasporas of Australian Cinema – A Provocation 9 Toby Miller Part One: Theories 13 Chapter 1 Introduction: Rethinking Diasporas – Australian Cinema, History and Society 15 Catherine Simpson, Renata Murawska and Anthony Lambert Chapter 2 Tinkering at the Borders: Lucky Miles and the Diasporic (no) Road Movie 29 Catherine Simpson Chapter 3 Ethics and Risk in Asian-Australian Cinema: The Last Chip 41 Audrey Yue Chapter 4 ‘I’m Falling in Your Love’: Cross-cultural Romance and the Refugee Film 51 Sonia Magdelena Tascón Chapter 5 White Aborigines: Women, Space, Mimicry and Mobility 61 Anthony Lambert Part Two: Representations 71 Chapter 6 Wogboy Comedies and the Australian National Type 73 Felicity Collins 6 | DIASPORAS OF Australian CINEMA Chapter 7 Excess in Oz: The Crazy Russian and the Quiet Australian 83 Greg Dolgopolov Chapter 8 Anzac’s ‘Others’: ‘Cruel Huns’ and ‘Noble Turks’ 93 Antje Gnida and Catherine Simpson Chapter 9 ‘Now You Blokes Own the Place’: Representations of Japanese Culture in Recent Australian Cinema 103 Rebecca Coyle Chapter 10 Other Shorelines, or the Greek-Australian Cinema 115 John Conomos Part Three: Film-Makers 125 Chapter 11 ‘A European Heart’: Exile, Isolation and Interiority in the Life and Films of Paul Cox 127 Marek Haltof Chapter 12 Sophia Turkiewicz: Australianizing Poles, or ‘Bloody Nuts and Balts’ in Silver City (1984) 137 Renata Murawska Chapter 13 Lebanese Muslims Speak Back: Two Films by Tom Zubrycki 147 Susie Khamis Chapter 14 Sejong Park’s Birthday Boy and Korean-Australian Encounters 159 Ben Goldsmith and Brian Yecies Diasporic Filmography 169 Garry Gillard and Anthony Lambert References 183 Notes on Contributors 199 Index 203 AC KNOWLEDGEMENTS This book has been an incredibly enjoyable collaborative and scholarly journey. To our contributors listed in the index, thank you for the privilege of working with your amazing ideas, and for your patience. Our gratitude goes to a number of institutions and individuals without whose support this book would not have been possible. Institutionally we would like to acknowledge Macquarie University’s Divisional Research Fund, especially Anne Cranny- Francis, Peter Doyle and the Departments of Media and Critical and Cultural Studies. In addition, we would like to thank Simon Drake at the National Film and Sound Archive (Sydney and Canberra) and the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London. There are also a number of people whose generosity with additional reviewing of papers extended beyond the call of duty and they include Ina Bertrand, Felicity Collins, Maree Delofski, Grisha Dolgopolov, Susie Khamis, Leonard Janiszewski and Effy Alexakis. We are indebted to all the film-makers and artists whose work is mentioned in the following pages; in particular, for their generous donation of materials and time, we would like to thank Gosia Dobrowolska, Sophia Turkiewicz, Tom Zubrycki, John Weiley, Michael Bourchier and Blink films. Our gratitude goes to Intellect for their professionalism, to the anonymous reviewers of this book and in particular to the very efficient Melanie Harrison. Also to Toby Miller, thanks for your ‘provocation’. Finally, Catherine and Renata’s sincere thanks to Anthony Lambert, who came on board just as the chapters were rolling in. Without his rigorous editing, inspiration and dedication to deadlines, we would probably still be working on this book! We would all like to pay special tribute to long-suffering family and friends. In particular, Anthony would like to acknowledge his partner Matthew, parents Les and Brigid, sister Pauline, brother Daniel and their families, as well as the children and grandchildren of his late sister Bernadette Carstein, who passed away as this book was coming together. Renata would like to acknowledge the support from Jasiu and Mum Basia. Catherine is eternally grateful to her partner Bruce, to Mona and to daughters Ayesha and Rahni. PREF ac E : DIASPORAS OF AUSTRALIAN CINEMA – A PROVO ca TION Toby Miller Diasporic hybridity, the organizing concept of this exciting volume, is at once a tribute to the tenacity and pugnacity of diasporic groups to sustain cultural formations, and a recognition of the inevitability of messy, abject, mixed cultural forms. In this preface, I would like to consider population issues theoretically and numerically, ending with some ideas for textual analysis. It is some time since I have been an informed student of Australian cinema, but what follows has enriched my memory, updated my present knowledge and stimulated me to consider the theoretical and political issues that animate this bold and innovative book. We inhabit a worldwide crisis of belonging, a population crisis of who, what, when and where. More and more people feel as though they do not belong; more and more people are applying to belong; and more and more people are not counted as belonging. Australian multiculturalism, the concept that underpins and is questioned by this book, was an attempt to deal with the beginnings of this crisis to ensure two things: labour peace, against the risk of restive unions, and racial peace, against the intolerance of European-descended white people. The screen texts spawned by the cultural side to this policy have been manifold and manifest, often critical of the idea of multiculturalism as well as its programmatic implementation. So where did this global crisis come from? It began in the 1960s and has continued since, because of: n changes in the global division of labour, as manufacturing left the First World and subsistence agriculture was eroded in the Third; 10 | DIASPORAS OF Australian CINEMA n demographic growth, through unprecedented public-health initiatives; n increases in numbers of refugees, following numerous conflicts amongst satellite states of the United States and the former Soviet Union; n transformations of these struggles into intra- and trans-national violence, after half of the imperial couplet unravelled; n the associated decline of state socialism and triumph of finance capital; n vastly augmented trafficking in human beings; n the elevation of consumption as a site of social action and public policy; n renegotiation of the 1940s–70s compact across the West between capital, labour, and government, reversing that period’s redistribution of wealth downwards; n deregulation of key sectors of the economy; and n the development of civil-rights and social-movement discourses and institutions, extending cultural difference from tolerating the aberrant to querying the normal and commodifying the result. The dilemmas that derive from these changes underpin political theorist John Gray’s (2003) critique of ‘the West’s ruling myth … that modernity is a single condition, everywhere

Load more