Caught on Screen
eBook - ePub

Caught on Screen

Australia’s Convict History in Film and Television

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Caught on Screen

Australia’s Convict History in Film and Television

About this book

From innocent criminals to radical revolutionaries, feisty feminists to manly pioneers, egalitarian settlers to violent invaders, Caught on Screen shows how over successive generations the shape-shifting convict emerged on screen as a potent historical symbol.

Convicts loom large in Australian history. As transported criminals and the first European settlers, they have shackled the nation to a curious and contested origin story. Historians were largely silent on their exploits until the second half of the twentieth century, but before then a tradition of convict representation on screen appeared with the rise of cinema, taking hold of the popular imagination. From silent films to more recent television series, screen culture has elevated the convict experience to become a key historical narrative through which filmmakers and audiences have repeatedly reframed and challenged an understanding of Australia's colonial past. Caught on Screen traverses this history of convict representation for the first time.

Through detailed archival research into their production and reception, the book explores engaging case studies produced in Australia and internationally, including the work of Douglas Sirk, Alfred Hitchcock and Jennifer Kent. It illuminates the fact that the convict as historical symbol is one that intersected with, and helped to direct, major debates about nationalism, the legacies of colonisation, Aboriginal dispossession and the origins and character of Australian society.

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Yes, you can access Caught on Screen by James Findlay in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Media & Performing Arts & Film History & Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-Title
  3. Title
  4. Contents
  5. List of Figures
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. Introduction: How to watch a flogging
  8. 1 Framing the innocent: The silent era
  9. 2 Us colonials through their eyes: Convict cinema goes global
  10. 3 The ghosts of Port Arthur: Travelogues and dark tourism
  11. 4 They came in chains to build a television nation: Emancipation, egalitarianism and new nationalism on the small screen
  12. 5 Bolters and bushtopias: Narratives of convict escape
  13. 6 A new stain: Screening convict violence on the frontier
  14. Conclusion
  15. Bibliography
  16. Index
  17. Copyright