ABSTRACT

While Australian cinema is generally defined by the feature filmmaking tradition, at least since the 1970s, ‘utilitarian filmmaking' represents a significant but barely visible portion of screen culture in Australia, a portion that has had an emphatic but unexamined influence on the media industries, education systems, industrial relations, research culture and national culture. Recent scholarly work undertaken internationally has shown how this vital strand of cultural and industrial history has often been overlooked; worse, it has often been expunged from cultural memory, either by critical neglect or through the destruction of archives previously deemed worthless by businesses and collecting-agencies. Given the insights and impacts of the latest studies of utilitarian filmmaking in the US and Europe, it is no exaggeration to propose that local, Australian holdings in the genre will come to be understood as a hitherto overlooked skein of ‘DNA’ in our national media systems. To study this heritage is to deepen our understanding of general/global and local/national characteristics of audiovisual culture and aesthetics as they operate in Australia, as well as to contribute in a major way to the burgeoning scholarship in international media archive research.This Introduction will focus on the manner in which ‘utilitarian cinema’ operates in relation to conceptions of Australian national cinema as well as to how this term can also contribute to formulations of transnational cinema. It will introduce the findings of this Australian Research Council funded research project being conducted by Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd, Stella Barber, Mick Broderick, Ross Gibson, John Hughes, Grace Russell and Deane Williams as well as introducing the case studies that were undertaken.

摘要

虽然澳大利亚电影通常由故事片制作传统定义，但至少自 1970 年代以来，“功利主义电影制作”代表了澳大利亚银幕文化中重要但几乎不可见的部分，这部分对媒体行业产生了重要但未经审查的影响，教育系统、产业关系、研究文化和民族文化。最近在国际上开展的学术工作表明，这一重要的文化和工业历史脉络常常被忽视；更糟糕的是，它经常被从文化记忆中抹去，要么是由于严重忽视，要么是通过销毁以前被企业和收藏机构认为毫无价值的档案。鉴于美国和欧洲功利主义电影制作的最新研究的见解和影响，可以毫不夸张地提出，澳大利亚本地持有的这一类型的内容将被理解为我们国家媒体系统中迄今被忽视的“DNA”。研究这一遗产是为了加深我们对在澳大利亚运作的视听文化和美学的一般/全球和地方/国家特征的理解，并为国际媒体档案研究的新兴奖学金做出重大贡献。将重点关注“功利主义电影”与澳大利亚民族电影概念相关的运作方式，以及该术语如何有助于跨国电影的形成。它将介绍由 Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd、Stella Barber、Mick Broderick、