Australian Screen Education articles from December 2003

Australian Screen Education archives from December 2003

Editorial.
December 22, 2003... There are a number of critical themes running through the articles in this issue of Australian Screen Education, connecting as seemingly disparate subjects as The Big Sleep and Arnie's rise to gubernatorial power, Citizen Kane and The Daily...

Australia's media the 'most open.(ED News)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... The audience at the 2003 Andrew Olle Media Lecture by Harold Mitchell, Chairman and CEO of Mitchell and Partners, heard that Australia is unique, in that 'it does not exclude overseas cultures and their products from our markets and our...

Media ignores Aboriginal diversity.(ED News)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... Aboriginal politician Linda Burney had something to say on the differences between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous media in Australia: 'One of the things that annoys me, I suppose, about the way in which the white media approaches...

Indigenous education: a concern.(ED News)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... The following figures, put out by the Department of Education, Science and Training, are giving educators cause for alarm: 1224 Indigenous people began education degrees during 1997, by 2002, this number had fallen ...

Island education under the microscope.(ED News)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... New Zealand's Aid Minister, Marian Hobbs, has announced $US6.5 million in funding for the Solomon Islands to improve access to basic education. Ms Hobbs says access to quality basic education is a human right and an investment in the future...

Australia's commerce of education.(ED News)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... Radio Australia's Radio Now programme has looked at the internationalization of education in Australia, and found: Overseas students now make up over eighteen per cent of total enrolments in Australian universities, ...

Coming events.(ED News)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... WA: IMAGINE--Implications for the future of Australian Visual Arts Education The Australian Institute of Art Education and the Art Education Association of WA will hold a National Summit at the Curtin University, Curtin Gallery Lecture Theatre,...

New resources from the Australian Children's Television Foundation: the ACTF free interactive online kit for media teachers.
December 22, 2003... LOOKING FOR RESOURCES to teach media concepts from mid-primary to senior secondary levels? The latest resource from the ACTF will be available from 1 January 2004 on the Learning Centre at www.actf.com.au. The Learning Centre will be searchable...

The joke's on US folks: during the first three nights of the Gulf War in 1991, the three major networks lost an estimated $25 million a day in ad revenue. And yet they say we won that war?
December 22, 2003... From The Daily Show with Jon Stewart IN JANUARY 1991, ANOTHER US President Bush was threatening war on Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The media was in a frenzy, and tensions were high in anticipation of the world's great super-power entering into...

'What might have been will have been': Arnie has got the girl, killed the baddies, and saved the universe ... now he's California's governor-elect ...
December 22, 2003... They have terminated jobs. They have terminated growth. They have terminated dreams. It is time to terminate them. REALITY CHECK: this is not a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger's blockbuster, Terminator (James Cameron, 1984). Rather, this...

Beyond the hero's journey: 'Joseph [Campbell] is my Yoda.'--George Lucas (1).
December 22, 2003... IN 1984, AT AN EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY celebration for mythologist, philosopher and scholar, Joseph Campbell, George Lucas suggested that, were it not for Campbell he might still have been writing Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977). Lucas' infamous...

La Biennale di Venezia 2003.
December 22, 2003... The fiftieth anniversary of the Venice Biennale, 2003, Dreams and Conflict--The Dictatorship of the Viewer, allows its audience to explore the boundaries, pathways and adventures of art, Curator and director Francesio Bonami decided to...

Spellbinder: exploring science fiction and fantasy.(Study Guide)
December 22, 2003... SPELLBINDER is a compelling science fiction (SF), fantasy television series about an urban teenager, Paul Reynolds, who finds himself accidentally stranded in a strange medieval world that is, in fact, in the same time and place as our own--a...

Astonish me: science fiction (sci-fi) as a film genre has undergone a radical metamorphosis from a much-maligned 'B Grade' genre of the classical Hollywood period (roughly 1920-1960) to the highly desirable multi-million dollar box office blockbuster genre of contemporary Hollywood cinema.(Science Fiction At The Movies)
December 22, 2003... This transformation has been partially attributed to the success of Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977), acclaimed as amongst the most popular films of all time. (1) The immense popularity of the Star Wars series, especially with a teen and pre-teen...

From the bush to the mall: the national myths, rites, rituals and discourses that have pulsed through Australian film over the hundred years since the Salvation Army produced Soldiers of the Cross, reflect Australia's cultural growth and its fluid national identity. This identity is still as elusive and problematic as ever, despite populist attempts to pin it down.
December 22, 2003... Australian film has defined and re-defined national fictions. From the bush legends of the early twentieth century to narratives that reflect the pluralism of contemporary Australia, film has re-imagined and re-imaged the possible dimensions...

Molly & Mobarak: a subversive act: Tom Zubrycki talks about his latest documentary, his motivation and his approach to documentary film-making.(Interview)
December 22, 2003... FOR TOM ZUBRYCKI, MAKING Molly and Mobarak was his way to personally contribute to the refugee/asylum seeker debate in Australia. 'The process of humanizing someone can be a political act. When people can identify with someone or a situation,...

Digital grassroots: Part 4.
December 22, 2003... SCENE 7 EQUIPMENT GOING BEYOND CAMERA AND COMPUTER IT IS TRUE THAT ALL THAT IS REALLY necessary for digital video production is a camera and a correctly fitted-out computer. That said, like any good artistic statement, there is a great...

'The tools to re-image my world': a paper on cineliteracy for high school and primary teachers.
December 22, 2003... There's a Year 7 student known to most teachers. It could be either a girl or a boy, but let's say it's a boy. He doesn't read or write very well. In fact, he feels so bad about the problem that he won't open a book at all. He's in a special...

Using film in Senior English classrooms in Queensland: expanding our literacy repertoires.
December 22, 2003... PRIOR TO THE UPDATING OF the Senior syllabus in English in 2002, films were mostly deployed in English as review material. This is because the old syllabus was largely 'generic', and focused on the primarily structural reproduction of genres,...

Tropfest dreams.
December 22, 2003... I'VE BEEN TEACHING FILM FOR ten years, and what started as a media in-joke has become prescient--the path to success as a filmmaker is no longer determined by a place at film school, but by a place in the Tropfest finals. So exactly what is...

Apple Distinguished Educator profile: rethinking literacy for the digital age.
December 22, 2003... SUCCESSFUL TEACHING AND learning in the Information Age requires change not solely in what is taught, but also in the way it's taught. That is the experience of Kym Nadebaum, an Apple Distinguished Educator specializing in video and information...

PLC unplugs for better teaching and learning.
December 22, 2003... iBook laptops and AirPort wireless networking enable every student to learn at the right pace, as a Perth school harnesses the educational benefits of Apple technology. Individual laptops can overcome the limitations of traditional...

Leave your theory at the door: stage and screen 2004.
December 22, 2003... Actor and casting director Chris Betts got his first break as an understudy. Working on Bertolt Brecht's The Life of Galileo with the Queensland Theatre Company in 1981, a recently graduated Betts found himself thrust into the principal role,...

Teaching film--whether you wanted to or not.
December 22, 2003... If you're teaching film, you're in for quite a treat. If you can inspire enough interest in your class you just might have a subject on your hands that gives more returns than any other you have taught. Making films (especially for the first...

Rethinking Life is Beautiful (1).(Film As Text)
December 22, 2003... THE AIM OF THIS ESSAY is threefold. It is, firstly, to situate Life is Beautiful (Roberto Benigni, 1997) within recent Italian debates on the Fascist period and approaches to history; secondly, to address the question of an Italian Holocaust;...

Film, memory and nostalgia in Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso).(Film As Text)
December 22, 2003... CINEMA PARADISO, THE second feature film of the Sicilian film-maker Giuseppe Tornatore (1988), tells two parallel stories. First, it uses flashback and other conventional narrative elements to tell the quasi-autobiographical story of the...

Monsoon Wedding: raining on tradition.(Film As Text)
December 22, 2003... IN MONSOON WEDDING (2001), director Mira Nair (Mississippi Masala 1998, Salaam Bombay! 1991) successfully entertains us with an over-the-top Indian wedding. She also presents some serious issues that are a part of Indian life, specifically...

Conflicting accounts: Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam.(Film As Text)
December 22, 2003... Bill Couturie's Dear America (1987) provides a view of the American involvement in Vietnam in a way that proves both bipartisan and viscerally emotional. The film achieves a tenuous balance between the relay of facts and an impartial, unbiased...

Some kind of a man: revisiting Citizen Kane.(Film As Text)
December 22, 2003... WHEN CITIZEN KANE APPEARED IN 1941 it received good reviews but audiences stayed away. Responding to the film's attack on his ethics and reputation, William Randolph Hearst--America's leading newspaper publisher and the media magnate of his...

'It's Harry I'm planning to marry': oedipal desire in Carol Reed's The Third Man.(Film As Text)
December 22, 2003... IN THE PREVIOUS ARTICLE OF THIS TWO PART SERIES, I argued that the interrelationship between characters and themes of shedding illusions, the law and mitigation, good citizenship and friendship, was central to understanding The Third Man. Here...

Bogarting the joint: ways of reading Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep.(Film As Text)
December 22, 2003... SO YOU'RE A PRIVATE detective. I didn't know they existed except in books, or else they were greedy little men snooping around hotels. (1) We made a picture that worked pretty well called The Big Sleep, and I never figured out what was...

Strictly Ballroom: no fear! A life lived in fear is a life half lived.(Film As Text)
December 22, 2003... Origins STRICTLY BALLROOM'S (Baz Luhrmann, 1992) story is based to some extent on director Luhrmann's own life, in that his mother was a teacher of ballroom dancing, and he himself was a competitive dancer from a young age. Shirley...

ScreenZine.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... ScreenZine is a regular section of Australian Screen Education that features film, TV and radio and multimedia reviews written by primary and secondary students. The aim of this section is to encourage young people to learn how to articulate...

Screentech.(Technical Section)
December 22, 2003... In talking about the ever-advancing movement of film-making technology, Francis Ford Coppola has been quoted as saying, 'There is a misconception that we are surrendering something of art to a technology that will do it for us. That is never...

Tony Ayres The Fat Boy.(Theater Review)
December 22, 2003... CURRENCY PRESS, CURRENT THEATRE SERIES, NSW, 2003. The Fat Boy is a cheeky play about an exceptionally cheeky young man, that combines sharp-edged moments of pathos with black comedy, which occasionally verges on the ridiculous. Written by...

Christine Olsen Rabbit-Proof Fence.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... AUSTRALIAN SCREENPLAYS, CURRENCY PRESS, NSW, 2002. One of the horrors of Australian history is what has become known as 'the stolen generation', where half-caste children were taken from their families, brought up thousands of miles away...

Geoffrey Sax Othello.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... 2001, 98 MINS, DISTRIBUTOR: MAXWELL'S COLLECTION PTY. LTD. HYPERLINK MAILTO: MAXWE LLS@MAXWELLS.COM AU Ignoring the short-comings of the play upon which it is based, this film adaptation of Othello, directed by Geoffrey Sax (2001), leaves...

Life on the Edge: Down Under.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... RONIN, FILMS, 2001, WA MUSEUM. VHS, 48 MINS. A superbly photographed and fascinating journey into the underwater world of the Dampier Archipelago, WA, where scientists from the WA Museum are documenting the co-existence of industrial...

Robert Markowitz The Great Gatsby.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... 2000, 91 MINS, DISTRIBUTOR : MAXWELL'S COLLECTION PTY. LTD, HYPERKINK MAIL TO: MAXWELLS@MAXWELLS.COM.AU Who amongst us hasn't been sucked in to the mystique of the 'Roaring Twenties', that golden age of some of the greatest extremes in...