Arts Faculty News

On Thursday 24 September 2009, Monash University’s Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory collaborated in its inaugural public event: a lively and thought-provoking seminar devoted to Quentin Tarantino’s divisive and highly popular new film, Inglourious Basterds.

Hosted by The Age critic Philippa Hawker, the speakers were:

• Mark Baker, director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation
• Adrian Martin, world-famous film critic and Co-Director of the Research Unit in Film and Cultural Theory
• Jan Epstein, Melbourne film critic and broadcaster
• Nathan Wolski, lecturer in Jewish Studies.

This event was presented by the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation in association with the Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory at Monash University.

The talks given on the night were filmed and can now be viewed, free of charge, at the Slow TV site of the Australian arts and current affairs magazine The Monthly.

For more of Adrian Martin’s analysis of Tarantino’s film, consult the forthcoming issue of the Australian art magazine UN, his extended essay on ‘sadistic cinema’ (in French translation) in the next issue of Trafic, and his feature piece “Revenge is Useless” which appeared (in Spanish translation) in the September-October issue of Cahiers du cinéma España.

Dr Therese Davis, co-director with Dr Adrian Martin of the new Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory, recently participated as an international guest in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Indigeneity and Performance, a series of international research workshops funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK.

Dr Davis gave a presentation on how Indigenous filmmakers in Australia are adopting and adapting film as a means for transmitting Indigenous cultural knowledge and history in ways that are radicalising conceptions of historical film and knowledge.

The Heritage and Material Culture workshop analysed functions of heritage within specific social/cultural groups as well as in cross-cultural situations. Heritage was considered not just in terms of transmitting and preserving objects, discourses, values and practices, but also in an expanded sense as mobilising historical understanding or social memory to nourish a desire for solidarity between generations.

Further information on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Indigeneity and Performance is available from the Beyond Text site.