Associate Professor Adrian Martin
PhD (Monash University)
Download Adrain Martin CV PDF 115 kb
Biography
Since 1979, Dr. Adrian Martin has combined work as a professional writer and film critic with a university career. He was film reviewer for The Age between 1995 and 2006. For his numerous books, essays and public lectures he has won the Byron Kennedy Award (Australian Film Institute) and the Pascall Prize for Critical Writing, and his PhD on film style won the Mollie Holman Award. He is the author of four books and hundreds of essays on film, art, television, literature, music, popular and avant-garde culture.
Research interests
I would describe my approach to cinema, television and indeed all art forms as a ‘cultural aesthetics’ – I am interested in cultural fads and trends, in social histories and political contexts, but I believe we can only speak well and meaningfully about any of these if we pay close attention to how cultural works actually, materially look and sound – not to mention how they make us feel. My tastes in cinema are very wide and diverse, since I believe in the importance of global cinema, and in cinema’s past. I have looked into Australian, American, European and Asian cinemas; I have studied genres including musical, melodrama, thriller and art film; I have analysed great auteurs from Sergio Leone and Fritz Lang to Hou Hsiao-hsien and Terrence Malick; I have an abiding interest in all marginal, underground and avant-garde cinemas. As a writer, I am also deeply invested in the ways, means, conditions and histories of critical discourse itself, and so I have spent most of my life piecing together international histories of theory and criticism.
Selected publications
- Once Upon a Time in America, 2008, British Film Institute
- Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia, 2003, Jonathan Rosenbaum (Editor), Adrian Martin (Editor), British Film Institute
- The Mad Max Movies, 2003, Currency Press Pty Ltd
- Phantasms, 1994, McPhee Gribble