Cinema Studies research projects
Cinema and civilisation: Science, progress and empire in early film
Professor Barbara Creed and Associate Professor Jeanette Hoorn
This project examines films from the silent period (1895-1927) of the cinema that portray the European mission civilisatrice in colonial nations around the globe. We will study colonial 'realities' of the Lumiére brothers, scientific research films, travelogues, documentaries, safari footage, newsreel and colonial propaganda films made by Australian, British, Dutch, German and French filmmakers in order to understand how early cinema portrayed the civilising process. This project is significant because it is the first to explore the relationship between early cinema, the spread of Western civilisation and local responses to it, and to reveal how these factors helped shape the nature of the cinema itself.
The Darwinian Screen: Race in Pacific and Australian Film 1900-1970
Professor Barbara Creed and Associate Professor Jeanette Hoorn
Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project (DP)
This project examines the influence of Darwinism in filmic narratives which deal with race that are set in Australia and the Pacific from 1900-1970. Science Fiction, Travel, South Seas Island Romance, Colonial Adventure and Jungle films made in Australia, New Zealand, America, the UK and France will be considered in order to determine the design and construction of race. The search for primitive man, the construction of 'types', the creation of utopian spaces for white subjects, the representation of evolution and devolution, the making of the Pacific as site for scientific endeavour and the production of narratives of survival are among the areas to be considered.
The Godzilla Project (in development)
Dr Wendy Haslem & Associate Professor Angela Ndalianis
Type of Project: Research and Learning Tool
The iconic figure of Godzilla will be used as a research and learning tool that can be accessed across a series of subjects, all of which will focus on different components of the project according to specific content needs.
Cold War Cultures and the Image of Globalisation
Dr. Mark Nicholls, Assoc. Prof. Angela Ndalianis, Dr. Wendy Haslem, Assoc. Prof. Charles Green (Art History), Dr. Anthony White (Art History), Dr. Fraser MacDonald (Melbourne School of Land and Environment), Assoc. Prof. Judith Keene (History, Sydney), Prof. Diane Kirkby (History/Art History, La Trobe).
Collaborative Research Project
Conventional analyses of the Cold War rely on a static binary division between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Focusing on film and art production between 1948 and 1975, this project reveals a more complex and dynamic interaction between cultures along the periphery of this binary. In Cold War-era Europe and Australasia, important cultural exchanges and networks emerged across political, national and intellectual boundaries. By placing local cultures at the centre of the analysis, the project investigates the idea that Cold War art and cinema were culturally inventive, politically charged and globally-networked in unexpected ways. These networks provide us with new directions for understanding Cold War cultures and how they presage present-day globalisation.
Children of Frankenstein: Science Fiction, Automata and the Emergence of Robot Realities
Associate Professor Angela Ndalianis
Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project (DP) (2009-11)
‘Children of Frankenstein’ evaluates the extent to which the gap is closing between science fiction and science reality, and it explores how the entertainment industry is playing a crucial role in realising the presence of robots and artificial life forms in our social spaces. Within this context the project will historicise the human obsession with and fear of creating artificial life. Tracing the industry intersection of entertainment and robotics/Artificial Intelligence systems, this project offers an evaluation of our changing society by focusing on paradigmatic examples of innovative entertainment technologies (in film and computer effects and ‘toy’ robots) that are also primitive, sentient beings.
Curatorial Culture
Associate Professor Angela Ndalianis and Professor Jim Collins (University of Notre Dame)
Our project investigates the massive impact that digital technologies have on the collecting and exhibition of culture. The research begins with the premise that traditional media theory is no longer adequate for describing the multiple-choice gestalts of contemporary visual culture. New delivery systems are redefining what going to a movie or watching TV means at the beginning of the twenty-first century, just as they have transformed the “display” of images at art museums. The accessibility and portability of digital information has given rise to a curatorial culture in which seemingly everyone can assemble their own music, film, television, and art libraries. Case studies such as the iPod playlist, YouTube, the media home library, retail environments, and public art museum as tourist destinations are examined as different manifestations of cultural archives, all shaped by the convergence of media space and museum space. We have become a race of curators.
The Hispanic Baroque: Complexity in the First Atlantic Culture
Associate Professor Angela Ndalianis and Professor Juan Luis Suárez (University of London, Ontario) and co.
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2008-12)
Angela Ndalianis is one of a group international scholars participating in this research project that was successfully funded by SSHRC. The project leader is Prof. Juan Luis Suárez (Department of Modern Languages & Literatures, The University of Western Ontario) and it brings together a team of international baroque scholars to explore the impact of the European baroque on the North and South Americas. Angela’s expertise on the neo-baroque and contemporary culture will form an important part of this project.
Charles Darwin in Australia: Art and Evolution
Associate Professor Jeanette Hoorn
As part of the global celebrations in honour of the bicentenary of Charles
Darwin's birth, the exhibition 'Charles Darwin in Australia: Art and
Evolution' explores his impact on the arts and sciences from the Beagle
voyage to bio-ethics. A major highlight of the Ian Potter Museums 2009
exhibitions calendar, the show offers visitors a voyage through the history
and influence of Charles Darwin on Australian art. The exhibition unites
rare historical works and the material history of Darwin’s visit with
philosophical, ideological, scientific and creative reflections on Darwinian thinking from the voyage of HMS Beagle to the present as it has been represented by Australian artists. The exhibition offers a unique and
innovative opportunity to reveal the insights generated by situating
contemporary and historical artworks within a shared thematic tradition. The exhibition will make visible the changing engagement with aspects of Charles Darwin’s legacy as it has been received by Australian art and artists. Forthcoming exhibition, Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne August 14-November 4, 2009.
Reframing Darwin: The Beagle to Bio-Ethics
Associate Professor Jeanette Hoorn
'Reframing Darwin: The Beagle to Bio-Ethics' is a scholarly collection of
essays edited by Professor Jeanette Hoorn exploring the impact of Charles Darwin's visit to Australia and the influence of Darwinian thinking on Australian art, science and culture. Beginning with the voyage of HMS Beagle and finishing with bio-ethics and the Post- Darwinian body, this edited collection will accompany the exhibition 'Charles Darwin in Australia: Art and Evolution' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art the University of Melbourne August 14- November 1 2009. (In press Miegunyah Imprint, Melbourne University Publishing, 2009).
Two Ingénue in Tangiers: Hilda and Elsie Rix in Morocco
Associate Professor Jeanette Hoorn
Hilda Rix is known to art historians but little of Elsie Rix, her talented
sister, has been revealed. Echo to Hilda's Narcissus, she authored the
greater part of the Rix Tangiers correspondence, accompanied Hilda on
painting expeditions, was the model for several of Hilda's pictures and an
accomplished artist who according to the correspondence also painted and
sold work in Tangiers. This volume covers two journeys made by the Rix
sisters to Morocco 1912-14, read through their correspondence with their
mother in London. (Forthcoming, Melbourne University Press).
More research projects
Further information on the variety of projects in which staff and research fellows are involved is available on their profile pages, which can be accessed from the following pages: