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CELLULOID
SUBJECTS
TO DIGITAL
DIRECTORS
Changing Aboriginalities and
Australian Documentary Film, 1901–2017
Jennifer Debenham
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Debenham, Jennifer, author.
Title: Celluloid subjects to digital directors : changing aboriginalities
and Australian documentary film, 1901-2017 / Jennifer Debenham.
Description: Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, [2020] | Includes
bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019039882 | ISBN 9781789974782 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Aboriginal Australians in motion pictures. | Torres Strait
Islanders in motion pictures. | Documentary films--Australia--History
and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.A835 D43 2020 | DDC 791.43/6529915--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039882
Cover design by Peter Lang Ltd. Design by Brian Melville.
Cover image: Graeme Debenham.
ISSN 2504-4834
ISBN 978-1-78997-478-2 (print) • isbn 978-1-78997-479-9 (ePDF)
ISBN 978-1-78997-480-5 (ePub) • isbn 978-1-78997-481-2 (mobi)
© Peter Lang AG 2020
Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,
52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom
[email protected], www.peterlang.com
Jennifer Debenham has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.
All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
About the author
Jennifer Debenham holds a doctorate in Australian History from the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has lectured and tutored Australian history and sociology. She is currently a Conjoint Lecturer and Senior Research Assistant at the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her interests are in early contact histories, mythology, representation, memory and race. Previous publications include The Australia Day Regatta, co-authored with Christine Cheater (2014), and the online publication Colonial Frontier Massacres in Eastern Australia, 1788–1872, coauthored with Lyndall Ryan, William Pascoe and Mark Brown (2017).
About the book
‘This book provides a welcome overview of an intensely important area of Australian cinema history, tracing developments which have affected real lives among our Indigenous peoples. Debenham’s work is rich with information and insights, and is admirably accessible for both educational and general publics.’
– Andrew Pike, Managing Director, Pike Films
How did Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population go from being the objectified subjects of documentary films to the directors and producers in the digital age? What prompted these changes and how and when did this decolonisation of documentary film production occur? Taking a long historical perspective, this book is based on a study of a selection of Australian documentary films produced by and about Aboriginal peoples since the early twentieth century. The films signpost significant shifts in Anglo-Australian attitudes about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and trace the growth of the Indigenous filmmaking industry in Australia.
Used as a form of resistance to the imposition of colonialism, filmmaking gave Aboriginal people greater control over their depiction on documentary film and the medium has become an avenue to contest widely held assumptions about a peaceful colonial settlement. This study considers how developments in camera and film stock technologies along with filmic techniques influenced the depiction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The films are also examined within their historical context, employing them to gauge how social attitudes, access to funding and political pressures influenced their production values. The book aims to expose the course of race relations in Australia through the decolonisation of documentary film by Aboriginal filmmakers, tracing their struggle to achieve social justice and self-representation.
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Contents
Cultural Warning and Acknowledgement
PART I Exotic Subjects, 1901–1966
The Last of Their Kind: Aboriginal Life in Central Australia (1901)
Physical Traits: Life in Central Australia (1931)