Cinema and Media Studies

This paper examines the development of Karen ethnic media in social and historical contexts, for instance, evangelist mission of Christian missionaries, Karen nationalist movements, ethnic conflict situations and state policies. It shows that the different contexts of each Karen group and the plurality of Karen-ness have contributed to the diversity of Karen ethnic media. Also, Karen identity and Karen media interact considerably. As suggested by social identity view, Karen media as a social actor has shaped - and has been shaped by - Karen-ness simultaneously.

This essay analyses German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s films Fata Morgana (1970), Lessons of Darkness (Lektionen in Finsternis) (1992) and The Wild Blue Yonder (2005). It draws on the work of Elizabeth K. Rosen, and her analysis of how traditional, apocalyptic myths resurface in the work of postmodern artists, to argue that there are science fiction elements in these three films that are bound up with mytho-apocalyptic structures of time.

In this article, I examine Martin Lefebvre's distinction between setting and landscape (or, as he also formulates it, narrativised space and autonomous spectacle). I examine this distinction in order to think about some of the complex ways landscape can function in film.

I draw on the concept of Umwelt (surrounding-world) which the German film historian Lotte H. Eisner uses to analyse films from the Weimar period. Particularly focusing on Lupu Pick's Kammerspielfilm Sylvester (1924), Eisner shows how images of the surrounding-world in the film are not directly part of the narrative yet, at the same time, symbolically function to enhance or enlarge what is occurring in the drama.

One of my aims in drawing on the concept of Umwelt is to respond to Lefebvre's claim that there are not always fixed boundaries between setting and landscape or between 'narrational' and 'spectacular' modes of spectatorship. In order to show how permeable the boundaries between narrativised space and autonomous spectacle can be, I tease out and develop one of the paradoxes that is implicit in Lefebvre's analysis of the desert terrain in Pier Paolo Pasonlini's Teorema (1968).

An article published recently in the Spring edition of the NECSUS European Journal of Media Studies. This article is part of a special section on 'Greenness' and on the relationship between media, ecology and environmental criticism.

In the article I demonstrate that there are three different, interrelated modes of nature in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998). I suggest that these modes represent some of the different ways that human beings can be involved with nature and also the various ways human beings can know and experience nature. I further argue that this multifaceted presentation of nature is one way that Malick expresses a form of dialectical materialism in his work.

Extract from my chapter on Siegfried Kracauer, phenomenology, theology and physical reality in film. My chapter is part of an anthology on film realism entitled: The Major Realist Film Theorists: A Critical Anthology (2016), edited by Ian Aitken. You can order the book here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Major-Realist-Film-Theorists/dp/1474402216

This is an extract of a chapter I have published in the anthology:
Klaus Kinski, Beast of Cinema - Critical Essays and Fellow Filmmaker Interviews. This book is to purchase here: http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-9897-0

This article argues that the Australian film Lake Mungo (2008) probes key questions regarding the relationship between visual technology, perception and truth. This means that rather than only view events that occur in the film at the diegetic level of character action and interaction, it is critical to appreciate how the film is engaging audiences at the level of form.

This Bills Digest explains and discusses the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Amendment (Rural and Regional Measures) Bill 2017.

It has been prepared by the following members of the Parliamentary Library’s Social Policy section: Dr Tyson Wils, Dr Luke Buckmaster and Dr Shaun Crowe.

Bills Digests provide an independent perspective on legislation. They are written to assist members of Parliament in their consideration of Bills