THE ABORIGINE IN AUSTRALIAN CINEMA: FROM WALKABOUT TO RABBIT-PROOF FENCE
Abstract
The essay examines the treatment of Aborigine culture in Australian film through a study of two films separated by thirty years of cinematic history. The similarities and differences between the two films are examined in the light of historical developments in that period, and their respective contributions to the history of national cinema in Australia are outlined. It is argued that the more recent film, despite its significance in the wider acceptance among Australians of the cruel treatment of the Aboriginal population in earlier periods, made itself vulnerable to attacks by pro-colonial critics through its utilisation of Hollywood cinematic conventions. The older film, wholly fictional and stylistically expressionistic, has been criticized as condescending and sentimental, but avoided the excerbation of social and ethnic divisiveness. The reception and impact of the two films, it is argued, illustrate significant problems confronted in the emergence of national cinemas elsewhere
Keywords
Australian Cinema,National Cinema,Aborigines,Post-Colonialism
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