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Philip Brophy
‘A road movie in a frock’ is one way this much acclaimed, award-winning movie has been described.
But Philip Brophy has a different take in his provocative reading of Stephan Elliott's classic 1994 film. He invites you to consider what the film says about Australia, its history, its culture and its cinema and the results might surprise you. Join him on a wild ride that takes you beyond the film's frames to a darker Australia.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is the seventh title in Currency's Australian Screen Classics Series.
Reviews and extracts:
'... a wickedly engaging non-linear analysis of the film that pulses with odd juxtapositions and unexpected associations connecting up disparate elements into a 'map' of the film and the culture it conjures and from which it has grown'. Keith Gallasch,
Real Time No.85, June-July 2008. To read the full review, click here.
'... an invaluable rubik's cube of a book that speaks to us of many wise and dynamic things that are salient to our lives as artists, authors, filmmakers, educators, spectators and citizens who care about cinema and its ongoing aesthetic, cultural and existential potential to help us make sense of our one shared world'. John Conomos,
Screening the Past. To read the full review, click here.
'Brophy's achievement is to make Priscilla
seem a richer experience by his wide-ranging excavations beneath the film's gaudy surface ... Maybe you'd like a clearer guide through the film's journey, but you won't often have so many stimulating landmarks pointed out along the way.' Brian McFarlane,
Australian Book Review
Read an extract of
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (pdf)
For background information about the book and to learn more about Philip Brophy's work, visit www.philipbrophy.com
You might also be interested in Al Clark's production memoir
The Lavender Bus: How a Hit Movie was Made and Sold. For more information, click here.
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-821-7 | PB
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$15.41 ex GST
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Catharine Lumby
‘A wonderful read: I feel like I've been excavated and carbon dated.’
Graeme Blundell
One of the seminal films of the 1970s,
Alvin Purple depicts Alvin’s struggles with his irresistibility to women—from his school days and time as a waterbed salesman to his short-lived career as a sex therapist. The ‘definitive ocker comedy’,
Alvin Purple survived a critical mauling and went on to become the most commercially successful Australian film of the 1970s.
Catharine Lumby takes a fresh look at the film, the social and political era in which it was made and the forces that fuelled its success. She revisits claims that the movie is little more than an exercise in sexploitation and argues that the film is far more complex than its detractors have allowed.
See other titles in Currency's Australian Screen Classics Series.
Interviews and reviews:
To read our author interview with Catharine Lumby, click here.
Read an extract of
Alvin Purple (pdf)
An extract of Catharine Lumby's critique has also been published in the
Australian. To read, click here.
To read Philip O'Brien's article for the
Canberra Times, click here.
'this admirably lucid and wide-ranging study ... is another feather in the cap of a generally provocative series.' Brian McFarlane, Senses of Cinema. To read the article, click here.
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-844-6 | PB
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Tony Moore
When
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie burst onto the Australian screen in 1972 it created a furore. With ‘Bazza’ (Barry Crocker), the chundering, Fosters-sucking innocent abroad, Barry Humphries and Bruce Beresford created a foil for the audiences. The movie triggered a riotous sequel,
Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, and a wave of ocker comedies that celebrate and critique the Australian national character. With irrepressible humour and sharp-witted insight, Tony Moore explores the subversive satire of the films, their influence on his generation, and what they have to say today.
‘As Prime Minister I demonstrated my gift for ridicule by granting my only imperial honour to the intrinsically conservative Barry Humprhries. It’s time for a book that has fun with the political satire of Barry McKenzie’ The Hon. E.G. Whitlam AC, QC
Moore's fresh, humorous and unpretentious point of view
gives new context to the films. Fiona Press, Times Online. Click here for the complete article.
Read an extract of
The Barry McKenzie Movies (pdf)
See other titles in Currency's Australian Screen Classics Series.
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-748-7 | PB
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Henry Reynolds
Set in central-western New South Wales in the 1890s, Fred Schepisi’s film of Thomas Keneally’s award-winning novel is a powerful and confronting story of a black man’s revenge against an unjust and intolerant society.
Raised by missionaries, Jimmie Blacksmith, a young half-caste Aboriginal man, is poignantly caught between the ways of his black forefathers and those of the white society to which he aspires. Exploited by his boss and betrayed by his [white] wife, he declares war on his white employers and goes on a violent killing spree.
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith was one of the most significant films of the 1970s ‘renaissance’. It was the first Australian feature in which the whole story is told from an Aboriginal perspective and it broke new ground in dealing with one of the most tragic aspects of Australian history: the racist treatment of the Aboriginal population. The spectre of the violent and vengeful black had barely been touched upon and the depth of rage that the film put on screen was unprecedented in Australian film at the time.
To read an extract of Henry Reynolds' critique as published in
The Australian, click here.
'a timely and very important work' Sean Gorman,
Senses of Cinema
'another fine addition to Currency Press’
Australian Screen Classics
series' Keith Gallasch,
Realtime Magazine
To read the whole review, visit realtimearts.net
Read an extract of
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (pdf)
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is the eighth title in our Australian Screen Classics Series.
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-824-8 | PB
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Christos Tsiolkas
Fred Schepisi’s film,
The Devil’s Playground, is an intimate portrait of a 13-year-old boy struggling in spirit and body with the constraints of living in a Catholic seminary. It is also the story of how the Brothers cope with the demands of their faith. Made in 1976, this semi-autobiographical film established Schepisi as one of Australia’s most talented directors and was one of the first Australian films to be selected for Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.
Christos Tsiolkas invites you to share his twenty-five year journey of viewing, reviewing and re-imagining the film. He remembers his first illicit experience of the film at age thirteen and describes how his views of it changed in later years. As he chronicles the impact of
The Devil’s Playground on the development of his sense of self and of his love of cinema, he also explores the sexuality, politics, history and aesthetics of the film.
A passionate tribute to the power and possibilities of cinema.
Read an extract of
The Devil's Playground (pdf)
See other titles in Currency's Australian Screen Classics Series.
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-671-8 | PB
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Adrian Martin
‘No other Australian films have influenced world cinema and popular culture as widely and lastingly as George Miller’s
Mad Max trilogy’
So writes leading film writer Adrian Martin in this sparkling new appreciation of the movies that rudely shook up Australian cinema and made Mel Gibson and George Miller internationally famous.
Martin compares the three moves sharing his views on which works best and why. In a chapter dedicated to each film, he looks at their critical reception and their themes, examines shooting techniques and provides a shot-by-shot of integral scenes.
Since
Mad Max roared onto cinema screens in 1979, the films have developed a worldwide cult following and provoked numerous debates as to their meaning: are the films a study of masculinity in crisis, an investigation of good versus evil, a celebration of the Western (with wheels) or a frightening vision of the post apocalypse?
‘Max lovers, your definitive fix has arrived.’
Empire
Read an extract of
The Mad Max Movies (pdf)
See other titles in our Australian Screen Classics Series.
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-670-1 | PB
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Gail Jones
The Piano, written and directed by Jane Campion, is one of the most honoured films of the new Australian cinema, and is considered by many critics to be a modern masterpiece. Campion won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1993 for the film, making her the first woman ever to win this prestigious award; it also won Best Original Screenplay (Campion), Best Actress (Holly Hunter) and Best Supporting Actress (Anna Paquin) at the 1994 Oscars.
In 1880 the widowed, and mute, Ada (Holly Hunter) and her young daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin) leave their native Scotland and travel to New Zealand’s remote South Island, as the arranged family of Stewart (Sam Neil), an Englishman who lives and works the land there. With them come Ada’s piano which serves as her outlet of expression, her ‘voice’. Despite fierce insistence from Ada, Stewart leaves the piano on the beach after he decides it is too heavy to carry back to his homestead. Stewart’s neighbour Baines (Harvey Kietel) makes a deal with Stewart for the piano and lessons with Ada, which has dire repercussions for them all.
Gail Jones’ essay brings a fresh and original vision to this acclaimed film in Currency's Australian Screen Classics series.
Read an extract of
The Piano (pfd)
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-799-9 | PB
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Nell Schofield
‘Fish-faced moll’, ‘rooting machine’, ‘melting our tits off’: with its raw, in-your-face dialogue, Bruce Beresford’s film has become a cult classic, just like the novel on which it was based by Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette. A coming-of-age film with bite,
Puberty Blues is set in the 1970s and follows the misadventures of Debbie an Sue, two Cronulla girls angling to break out of ‘dickheadland’ into the coolest surfie gang. But when they finally muscle their way in, they are disillusioned.
In this lively and honest account, writer and broadcaster Nell Schofield recalls how she won the role of Debbie and what it was like on the set. She looks at the parallels between the film, the book and her own surfside teenage years, and at the extraordinary response the film generated both then and since. It’s a story as idiosyncratically Australian as the film that showed everyone who ever had any doubt that chicks
can surf.
Read an extract of
Puberty Blues (pdf)
See other titles in our Australian Screen Classics Series.
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-749-4 | PB
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Louis Nowra
Nicolas Roeg’s
Walkabout opened worldwide in 1971. Based on the novel of the same name, it tells of two white children lost in the Australian outback who survive because of the help of an Aboriginal boy. The film earned itself a unique place in cinematic history and was re-released in 1998.
In this illuminating reflection, Louis Nowra discusses Australia’s iconic sense of the outback and the peculiar resonance the story of the lost child has in the Australian psyche. He identifies the film’s distinctive take on a familiar story and its fable-like qualities, while also exploring the film’s relationship to Australia and its implication for the English society of its day.
Walkabout, says Nowra, ‘destroyed the cliché 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’.
‘Louis Nowra’s Walkabout …
[made me] eager to see the film again ... and my experience of it this second time around was significantly enriched by having read Nowra’s book.’ Screening the Past
Read an extract of
Walkabout (pdf)
See other titles in Currency's Australian Screen Classics Series.
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-700-5 | PB
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