Feature Item
Jointly published by Currency Press and the National Film and Sound Archive, AUSTRALIAN SCREEN CLASSICS is a series of film monographs written by prominent writers from disciplines ranging across art, culture and politics on Australian films they feel passionate about. Combining careful research with high quality writing, the series will make an exciting contribution to screen culture and offer readers the chance to enjoy lively, intelligent, creative and provocative writing on some of our most prized films. The series has its own distinctive design and will retail for $14.95.
The series is edited by Jane Mills, Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney and Senior Research Associate at the Australian Film, Television & Radio School where she was Head of Screen Studies 1995-2001. Jane teaches screen studies and cineliteracy and has a production background in television and documentary film. The author of books on subjects including feminism, human rights and linguistics her most recent book is The Money Shot: Cinema, Sin and Censorship. Jane is a founder-member of 'Watch on Censorship'.
The first four books in the series are:
Puberty Blues
In this lively and honest account, writer and broadcaster Nell Scholfield recalls how she won the role of Debbie and what it was like to be on the set. She looks at the parallels between the film, the book and her own surfside teenage years, and at the extraordinary responses to the film, both on its release and since.
0 86817 749 1
The Devil's Playground
Christos Tsiolkas (author of Loaded and The Jesus Man) invites you into his twenty-five year journey of viewing, re-viewing and re-imagining Fred Schepisi's haunting film. The result is a passionate tribute to the power and possibilities of cinema.
0 86819 670 3
The Mad Max Movies
Adrian Martin (Once Upon a Time in America and film critic for the Age) offers a sparkling, new appreciation of these cult classics: 'No other Australian films have influenced world cinema and popular culture as widely and lastingly', writes Adrian.
0 86819 670 3
Walkabout
Louis Nowra, playwright, novelist and screenwriter (The Golden Age, Radiance, Cosi, Black and White) says Walkabout 'destroyed the cliche of the Dead Heart and made us Australians see it from a unique perspective, as something wondrous, mysterious and sensuous. It took a stranger in a strange land to reveal it to us.
