Abstract
Australian women’s filmmaking has been shaped by a stop-and-start history of funding initiatives and structures of opportunity aimed at addressing gender imbalance in the industry. This chapter looks at three recent Australian films by female directors who craft their stories through and around interruption, delay and repetition in ways that draw on, or resonate with, the history of women’s filmmaking in Australia. The three films examined here are Margot Nash’s personal essay documentary film The Silences (2015), Sophie Hyde’s queered coming-of-age film 52 Tuesdays (2014) and Sue Brooks’ dramedy Looking for Grace (2015). Whilst these three films differ in genre, aesthetic and budget, each uses interruption as way of creating spaces for different kinds of intergenerational female stories.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Australian Film, Television and Radio School. “Women in Film (special issue).” Lumina: Australian Journal of Screen Art and Business 14 (May 2015).
Bailey, Julie James. “Affirmative Action: Getting Women behind the Television Camera.” In WomenVision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia, edited by Lisa French, 79−91. Melbourne: Damned Publishing, 2003.
Baughan, Nikki. “The Invisible Woman: Film’s Gender Bias Laid Bare.” Sight & Sound, May 11, 2016. Accessed April 30, 2017. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/invisible-woman-film-gender-bias-laid-bare.
Blonski, Annette., Barbara Creed., and Freida Freiberg, eds. Don’t Shoot Darling! Women’s Independent Filmmaking in Australia. Richmond: Greenhouse, 1987.
Collins, Felicity. “Ties That Bind: The Psyche of Feminist Filmmaking Sydney, 1969−1989.” PhD Diss., University of Technology Sydney, 1995.
Davidson, Monica. “Knocking on a Locked Door: Women in Australian Feature Films.” Lumina: Australian Journal of Screen Art and Business 14 (May 2015). Accessed April 30, 2017. http://www.aftrs.edu.au/media/books/lumina/lumina14-ch1-1/index.html.
Dooley, Kath. “A Promise of Change: 52 Tuesdays (2013)—A Case Study of Collaborative, Low-Budget Feature-Filmmaking Practices.” Studies in Australasian Cinema 8.2–3 (2014): 150−162.
French, Lisa. “Does Gender Matter?” Lumina: Australian Journal of Screen Art and Business 14 (May 2015): 139−153.
Hyde, Sophie. “Sophie Hyde on 52 Tuesdays & a Whole Lot More …” Wellywood Woman. April 2, 2014. Accessed April 30, 2017. https://wellywoodwoman.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/sophie-hyde-on-52-tuesdays-whole-lot.html.
Martin, Adrian. “Call her Mum: Margot Nash’s ‘The Silences’.” The Lifted Brow, April 28, 2016. Accessed March 17, 2017. http://theliftedbrow.com/post/143500197415/call-her-mum-margot-nashs-the-silences-by.
Mayer, Sophie. Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2016.
Murray, Virginia., and Katya Johanson. “The Cut-Through Concept: 52 Tuesdays, Festivals and the Distribution of Independent Australian Films.” Studies in Australasian Cinema 9.1 (2015): 52−65.
Nash, Margot. “Experimentation and the Documentary.” FilmInk, April 7, 2016. Accessed March 17, 2017. https://filmink.com.au/2016/margot-nash-experimentation-and-the-documentary/.
Nash, Margot. “Lottie Lyell—The Silent Work of An Early Australian Scenario Writer.” Screening the Past 40 (2015). Accessed March 17, 2017. http://www.screeningthepast.com/2015/08/lottie-lyell-the-silent-work-of-an-early-australian-scenario-writer/.
Nash, Margot. “‘The Silences’: Process, Structure and the Development of a Personal Essay Documentary.” Sydney Studies in English 42 (2016): 1−25. Accessed February 15, 2017. http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=643171346116144;res=IELHS.
Screen Australia. Gender Matters: Women in the Australian Screen Industry. Ultimo: Screen Australia, 2015.
Screen New South Wales (Screen NSW). “Amplifier Announcement & NSW Screen Industry Achieves Dramatic Increase in Female Key Creatives, with Drama Projects Delivering Gender Parity & Commits from July 1, 50% of Feature Films it Funds will be Written or Directed by Women.” Screen NSW, n.d. Accessed April 30, 2017. http://screen.nsw.gov.au/news/nsw-screen-industry-achieves-dramatic-increase-in-female-key-creatives-with-drama-projects-delivering-gender-parity-commits-from-July-1-50-of-feature-films-it-funds-will-be-written-or-directed-by-women.
Screen New South Wales (Screen NSW). “Screen NSW Target to Achieve Gender Equality in the Film and Television Industry in NSW.” Screen NSW, November 25, 2015. Accessed April 30, 2017. http://www.screen.nsw.gov.au/news/screen-nsw-target-to-achieve-gender-equality-in-the-film-and-television-industry-in-nsw.
Verhoeven, Deb and Stuart Palmer. “Go Figure.” Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) online newsletter, posted July 12, 2016. Accessed May 15, 2017. https://www.meaa.org/news/go-figure/.
Wallin, Zoë. “Variations on a Theme: Pace and Perspective in Sue Brooks’ Looking for Grace.” Metro Magazine 188 (2016): 12−17.
White, Patricia. “Age Appropriate? Sundance’s Women Filmmakers Come Next.” Film Quarterly 67.2 (2013): 80−84.
White, Patricia. Women’s Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015.
Windsor, Harry. “Saving Grace.” Inside Film 169 (February 2016): 18−19.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Mark Ryan for his valuable feedback on an earlier version of this essay.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brooks, J. (2017). Gender Matters: Gender Policy and the Rewriting of the Mother–Daughter Narrative in Contemporary Australian Women’s Filmmaking. In: Ryan, M., Goldsmith, B. (eds) Australian Screen in the 2000s. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48299-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48299-6_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48298-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48299-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)