Investigators:

Dr Claire Henry, Dr Missy Molloy (Victoria University of Wellington), Dr Pansy Duncan (Massey University)

Summary:

From AI to climate change, recent technological, ecological, cultural and social transformations have unsettled established assumptions about the relationship between the human and the more-than-human world. Screening the Posthuman addresses a heterogenous body of twenty-first century films that turn to the figure of the “posthuman” as a means of exploring this development.

Through close analyses of films as diverse as Air Doll (dir. Hirokazu Koreeda 2009), Woman at War (dir. Benedikt Erlingsson 2018) and Fast Color (dir. Julie Hart 2018), the book shows that, while often identified as the remit of science fiction, the “posthuman on screen” crosses filmic genres, national contexts and industrial settings.

In the process, posthuman cinema emphasizes humanity’s entanglement in broader biological, technological and social worlds and exposes new models of subjectivity, politics, community, relationality and desire.

In advancing these arguments, Screening the Posthuman draws on scholarship associated with critical posthumanist theory - an ongoing project unified by a decentering of the figure of the “human” and driven by critics such as Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Cary Wolfe, N. Katherine Hayles, and Stacy Alaimo.

As the first systematic, full-length application of this body of scholarship to cinema, the book advocates for a rigorous posthumanist critique that avoids both humanist nostalgia and transhumanist fantasy in its attention to the excitements and anxieties of posthuman existence.

Categories:

Posthumanism and screen media

Genre studies

Investigators:

Dr Claire Henry

Summary:

A surreal and darkly humorous vision, David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) has been recognised as a cult classic since its breakout success as a midnight movie in the late 1970s.

Claire Henry’s study of the film takes us into its netherworld, providing a detailed account of its production history, its exhibition and reception, and its elusive meanings. Using original archival research, she traces how Lynch took his nightmare of Philadelphia to the City of Dreams, infusing his LA-shot film with the industrial cityscapes and sounds of the Callowhill district. Henry then engages with Eraserhead’s irresistible inscrutability and advances a fresh interpretation, reframing auteurism to centre Lynch’s creative processes as a visual artist and Transcendental Meditation practitioner. Finally, she outlines how Lynch’s ‘dream of dark and troubling things’ became a model midnight movie and later grew in reputation and influence across broader film culture.

From the opening chapter on Eraserhead’s famous ‘baby’ to the final chapter on the film’s tentacular influence, Henry’s compelling and authoritative account offers illuminating new perspectives on the making and meaning of the film and its legacy. Through an in-depth analysis of the film’s rich mise en scène, cinematography, sound and its embeddedness in visual art and screen culture, Henry not only affirms the film’s significance as Lynch’s first feature, but advances a wider case for appreciating its status as a film classic.

Categories:

Film history

Genre studies

Investigators:

Dr Nicholas Godfrey

Summary:

This project aims to revitalise our understanding of South Australia and its society and culture, by identifying significant films held in the State Film and Video Library of South Australia.

Researchers will audit the collection of 16mm films held in the Universities Research Repository of South Australia at Flinders University identifying unique, socially and historically significant film prints that should be prioritised for exhibition and preservation.

This project will produce new knowledge about the history of non-theatrical film exhibition in Australia, and aims to inform future policy for audiovisual preservation.

Grant:

• History Trust of South Australia’s South Australian History Fund Grant

Categories:

Preservation and digital cultural heritage

Investigators:

Associate Professor Julia Erhart, Associate Professor Kath Dooley (University of South Australia), Associate Professor Tully Barnett

Summary:

The participation of female workers in the film and television production sectors has for a long time been chronically lower than men’s, and there is some evidence that women’s participation rates are declining.

Barriers to women’s employment in the sector are complex, entrenched, and often compounded by embedded sexism and gendered attitudes about women’s capacity. To date, there has been little research about the experience of trans, non-binary and other gender diverse people in the screen industries.

Screen Australia generates data on women’s participation rates, but reports tend to focus on ‘above the line’ roles of director, writer, and producer, leaving uninterrogated the participation of women and gender diverse workers in roles that include postproduction and cinematography as well as those who work in the burgeoning virtual production sector.

This project aims to map the experiences of women and gender diverse workers who are employed in the virtual production and postproduction sectors.

Categories:

Gender equity and labour in media production

Investigators:

Associate Professor Julia Erhart

Summary:

The Children’s Hour is the first commercial American film distributed by a major distributor that features a lesbian character in a lead role. Because of a variety of factors, including the expressed ambivalence of playwright Lillian Hellman towards the lesbian subject matter and the changing rules on film censorship with respect to queer content, the film has been a contradictory object for queer audiences.

This book argues that the film remains an important touchstone and has much to tell us about anti-queer othering and panics, scandalmongering as a route to social legitimacy, and the productive power of censorship.

Through meticulous archival research on the film’s production and reception history, including production and pre-production correspondence, Production Code Administration files, mainstream newspaper reviews, reviews in the queer press, and personal letters received by director William Wyler, the book offers new insights into the cultural significance and contemporary relevance of what is argued to be a queer film classic.

Categories:

Film history

Feminist and LGBTQ+ media

Investigators:

Associate Professor Tully Barnett, Mr Jason Bevan, Mr Cameron Mackness, Ms Zoe Wallin 

Summary:

As virtual production facilities grow around the world, a range of creative, pedagogical and industry projects have arisen that showcase the challenges, innovations and collaborations presented by such technical cultural infrastructure.

Integrated virtual production, the combined use of VR technology, game engines, and LED walls in a studio environment and the process of using computer generated environments and assets to create screen content affords new ways of working and new solutions to creative problems.

This project seeks to answer questions about this new field by looking at technological, creative and organisational ideas that arise from implementing new integrated technologies in the development of entertainment production.

The project explores the potential applications of the cutting-edge virtual production technology and provides a framework for cross-disciplinary and industry collaborations both in a university context and beyond.

It offers insight into the development of virtual production courses and encompasses research into theories of performance, liveness, methods for co-creation, gender, the Anthropocene, while highlighting significant pathways of industry partnerships alongside experimental art practices.

This project is supported by Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts.

Categories:

Virtual production and new technologies

Investigators:

Associate Professor Tully Barnett, Mr Alex Cothren, Professor Robert Phiddian

Summary:

Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture is a research project based at Flinders University in South Australia looking at ways of understanding the value of arts and culture beyond the economic data, ticket sales and spill-over effects.

Economic impact studies do not tell the full story of the value of an organisation or event. Funding agencies require new ways of understanding the value of arts and culture organisations, events and objects, and policy makers require a new framework for thinking about the value of arts and culture. To remedy this, a team of researchers is partnering with senior arts and cultural organisations in South Australia.

Laboratory Adelaide: the Value of Culture has been funded by two Australian Research Council Linkage projects based at Flinders University (LP140100802 and LP17101933). Its team includes Professor Julian Meyrick, Professor Robert Phiddian, Professor Steve Brown, Associate Professor Tully Barnett with industry partners including State Library of South Australia, the Adelaide Festival, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Arts South Australia and Festival City Adelaide.

The team published the book What Matters? Talking Value in Australian Culture in 2018. Published articles include

Phiddian, R., Meyrick, J., Barnett, T., & Maltby, R. (2017). Counting culture to death: an Australian perspective on culture counts and quality metrics. Cultural Trends, 26(2), 174-180.

Meyrick, Julian, and Tully Barnett. "From public good to public value: arts and culture in a time of crisis." Cultural trends 30.1 (2021): 75-90.

Meyrick, Julian, and Tully Barnett. "Culture without “world”: Australian cultural policy in the age of stupid." Cultural Trends 26.2 (2017): 107-124.

Grant:

• LP140100802 Laboratory Adelaide: Accounting for Cultural Value in the Arts, Cultural Organisations and Events. 
• LP170100933 Meaningfully communicating the value of arts and culture through reporting.

Categories:

Creative industries

Investigators:

Dr Sarah Peters, Dr Tom Young, Dr Sean Williams, Helen Carter, Rebecca Edwards, Dr Nicholas Godfrey, Shane Bevin, Katie Cavanagh, Jason Bevan

Summary:

The Life Savings project began in May 2021 with the establishment of an interdisciplinary writers room.

Our goal was to identify and experiment with innovative ways of working collaboratively in the development of a short film, generating a case study of methods and strategies which can then be implemented both in the classroom and in wider industry environments.

Grant:

• Assemblage Funding
  

Categories:

Interdisciplinary collaboration