Lisa Milner

Cinema and community: a rural Australian case study

Lisa Milner — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:10:45 PST

Laying your cards on the table: representations of gambling in the media

Lisa Milner et al. — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:10:44 PST

The media saturates our 21st-century societies, helping to form our identities and our understanding of the world. The media sets the agenda for the way we live our lives; it echoes and shapes our culture, and reflects carefully selected images of consumers back at us. Gambling is an activity that appears across a wide variety of media sources. This article introduces a research project that investigates how gambling is portrayed in the Australian media. Taking a survey approach (a single day in a regional Australian town), the project describes the ways in which multiple forms of media present gambling in polarised and often contradictory perspectives. By exploring these various representations of gambling and the roles they play in our lives, the study provides material that can provide the understanding of how the general population comes to view gambling behaviour.

Strikes online: union films on YouTube

Lisa Milner — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:10:43 PST

Moving forward with an action plan: political campaigning on the big screen

Lisa Milner — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:10:43 PST

For decades, the media has been increasingly central to the conduct of elections. Politicians have made their mark in highly produced advertisements to further their cause, educate voters, and, perhaps, contribute to informed decision making at the ballot box. Ian Ward notes that television ‘has literally transformed the very practice of politics’, but well before the advent of television, politicians were massaging the media. Since the days of silent film, election campaign advertisements have set the agenda for debate and have reflected carefully selected images of the voting nation to themselves. I recently undertook the first comprehensive analysis of existing pre-television campaigns produced for Australian cinema screens. This article examines selected Australian election advertisements from silent screens to the dawn of the television era to explore how choices of framing agents have affected screen representations of politicians and their parties. Issues explored include aesthetic and stylistic considerations, personality and policy, and the growing intersection of early Australian political and media industries. The article charts a series of ongoing aesthetics and influences connecting our earliest political media to contemporary campaigns on television and the Internet, which demonstrate how some emerging trends of contemporary small-screen campaigning are but revamped older public relations methods.

From bananas to biryani: the creation of Woolgoolga Curryfest as an expression of community

Lisa Milner et al. — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:10:42 PST

Since the 1940s, a Punjabi Sikh subculture has been a part of the community of Woolgoolga, just north of Coffs Harbour in northern coastal New South Wales (NSW). This began with their relocation to Woolgoolga to farm bananas. Today the area boasts the largest regional Sikh settlement in Australia, and although banana farming continues to be an important aspect of Sikh life, these original families and other newcomers have diversified and branched out into other aspects of community existence. In an area with a growing regional population and an economy largely centred on food production, services and tourism, the ‘regional festival culture’ has been embraced as a way to reflect and create notions of community, as well as attract interest from visitors drawn to the multicultural township. This article considers the festival as not only a case study in the expansion of regional food cultures, but also identifies Curryfest as a conduit for the promotion of Woolgoolga as a unique and diverse community. It is important to note that definitions of ‘community’ will always be contested, as will issues over who has the right to represent a particular community. Understandings of multiculturalism can also be visited here but we suggest that it is important not to dismiss the official project of multiculturalism in Australia as being superficial and of limited value. The social significance of food demands that any exchange of culinary practices should in fact be given recognition as an important and potentially powerful social force.

Hands-on learning, long-distance delivery: teaching media to dispersed tertiary students: a case study

Lisa Milner et al. — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:10:41 PST

In 2009, staff at Southern Cross University redeveloped a first-year university media producation unit to cater for both on-campus and long-distance students, as part of a broader aim of making external enrolment accessible across all areas of study. Lisa Milner and Grayson Cooke report on the successes and drawbacks of the endeavour, and reflect on what they signify for geographically dispersed media education.

Screening unions: Representations of worker-citizenship in Australia films

Lisa Milner — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 18:25:35 PDT

In Australia in the 1950s, the Waterside Workers’ Federation Film Unit was the only film production group in the world that was funded by a trade union. The unit produced short films on subjects that other production units would never tackle, like the political background of protests from the union members’ viewpoint, and issues concerning workers’ rights. The filmmakers took a particular stylistic approach to the portrayal of workers, in a period when attempting to make public any left-wing culture was problematic. Since that time, unions in Australia have continued to represent their members on film, television and the internet. In focussing on a selection of works over the past fifty years, this paper examines the ways that working Australia has been represented on screen during a period of major demographic, economic and social change, and discusses the ways in which union-produced films provide a unique window into exploring the relationships between popular media and visual citizenship. It considers how the particular screen culture of worker representation reflects national values, identities, and socio-economic trends.

'We film the facts': the Waterside Workers' Federation film unit, 1953 - 1958

Lisa Milner — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 16:24:50 PDT

This thesis explores the history of the Waterside Workers' Federation Film Unit. Comprising three filmmakers, Norma Disher, Keith Gow and Jock Levy, this union production group operated in Sydney from 1953 to 1958. Within an environment which was generally hostile towards militant labour, it produced seventeen short films on a range of topics for the Waterside Workers' Federation and other labour and left wing organisations. To date, no comprehensive history of the work of the Unit exists. The work begins by giving a history of the Unit's operation. The second chapter explores the theoretical approaches to the topic. The Unit operated at a point of intersection of film, industry and culture, and the disciplinary areas of cinema studies, labour history and cultural studies are interrogated as to their utility in presenting a critical history of this group. The following chapter provides the context for the WWFFU, and examines the industrial, cultural and cinematic spheres of activity which existed as a background for the WWFFU's existence in Sydney from 1953 to 1958. Chapter Four undertakes a close analysis of three key films, examining how these filmmakers responded to industrial and political campaigns, and how the Unit's output related to its context. The final chapter reflects upon the provision of this history and the issues raised, including the changing nature of class in Australia, and representation within the documentary. This thesis contributes to a succession of Australian cultural histories. The localised milieux in which the Film Unit operated, its economic, political and social structures, were historically specific formations. Popular culture of the 1950s has often been positioned as predictable, but this is because a specific activist working class culture has seldom been examined. Bringing a localised working class cultural formation, such as the WWFFU, to a critical analysis is a valuable way to see beyond such positionings.

Framing the unions: the changing images of unionists on screen

Lisa Milner — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:07:26 PST

Amongst the oldest holdings of the National Film and Sound Archives is a newsreel segment showing the 1917 General Strike, a mass action that was arguably the biggest class conflict in Australian history, involving around 100,000 workers for three months. Since that era, strikes, demonstrations and industrial disputes have been a regular feature of Australian working life, despite the power and membership of unions fluctuating substantially over the course of the 20th century. However Australian screen producers have continued to depict strikes and other actions of trade union members on film, television and now on the internet. In focusing on a selection of screenworks over the past century, from silent newsreels through feature films and union documentaries to YouTube posts, this research project examines the ways that industrial disputes have been represented to their audiences, and discusses how they provide a unique window into exploring the relationships between media and identity. It considers how various screen discourses of unionist representation reflect changing national values, identities, and socio-economic trends.

Labour biography on screen: the case of Freda Brown

Rosemary Webb et al. — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:07:24 PST

The written biographies and memoirs of activists and leaders have long been core components of labour history. But biography is not only a literary genre – it is also a type of audio-visual production. The popular, and rapidly expanding, industry of screening history incorporates film and television biography, and this has been acknowledged in labour history. However, whilst scholars such as Milner, Taksa, and Brigden have analysed the representation of workers in Australian films, the interpretation and the implications of screen productions as biography, for Australian labour history, have been to date relatively unexplored.

The ways in which history and politics become visualised are the ways in which history and politics becomes a part of our lives. Thus, an important area of interest for this paper is visual citizenship, that is, the representation on screen of an individual's community, citizenship, nationality, even belonging. In their critiques of modernism, sociologists Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman accord media a central role in the maintenance of public culture. Biographies on screen are a part of public space – they are shared representations, compiling our collective memory of Australian history. Additionally, as biographies produced for the screen, they may have their own truth claims that may conflict with other histories that may convey their own particular perspectives.

Our paper analyses the 1995 episode of the documentary series Australian Biography (SBS 1992-2007) which focused on communist and women's activist Freda Brown (1919-2009). The paper discusses the historical and political process of compiling a filmic biography, and explores how this particular production deals with biography, notably with the collaborative, networking aspects of Brown’s career highlights. Conventionally, the material conveyed through this documentary might also have been delivered as oral history, or as written literature. Committing it to screen offers a visual physicality not contained within the other two media, and that physicality both expands and enhances biographical insight.

Delivering the 2000 New South Wales Premier's History Awards Address, Australian political documentary filmmaker Tom Zubrycki argued that documentary filmmakers have ‘the duty of giving a vehicle to these voices and adding their own to it. To the extent that this will continue to happen, documentary will remain a permanent feature of our cultural landscape and will continue to provide crucial insights into who we are as Australians’. Similarly for labour documentary, screen biography is not only a means of conveying labour narrative and analysis, but gives critical voice and presence to labour activists and provides insight into their place and role in the historical landscape.

Lee Papas (ed.), Staged action: six plays from the American Workers' Theatre.(Book review)

Lisa Milner — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:57:05 PDT

The Waterside Workers’ Cultural Committee

Lisa Milner — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:56:58 PDT

Kenny and Australian cinema in the Howard era

Lisa Milner — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:56:58 PDT

The “battler” figure has been a popular and enduring character in the Australian cultural imagination, of literature and screen, from the time of The Sentimental Bloke (1919) and then featured in the Dad and Dave films (1932-1995). It was later “ockerised” for Bazza McKenzie, “Crocodile” Dundee and others. It is a deeply engrained identifier in the national memory, this ordinary citizen, workingclass, well-intentioned, hard-working, the underdog who struggles against the world to overcome troubles through an essential integrity. The symbol of the battler has been used to reflect what we hope we are as Australians. My paper is about two more recent battlers on our screens.

Bastardising the Waterfront Dispute: production and critical reception of the Bastard Boys mini-series

Lisa Milner et al. — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:56:57 PDT

This article examines the production and reception of Bastard Boys, a television mini-series broadcast on ABC TV in May 2007 that depicted aspects of the 1998 Australian waterfront dispute. Our research concerns how the dramatisation of such a union dispute (and historical moment) informed the final outcome as a media product. Employing commonplace fictional devices as well as seemingly factual referents, the series offers a link to the original events via four 'personal' storylines. We scrutinise the critical reception of the series and argue that the supposed 'reality' and ethics of the dispute have been confused with those of the series creators in their representation of it. Although by no means the only creative production representing the disputes, the reception of this particular series was vociferous and controversial. In this production study, we investigate various aspects of the process involved in creating Bastard Boys and focus on the issues the series raises for media representation of industrial affairs in the political and production climate in the Howard era.

Kenny: the evolution of the battler figure in Howard's Australia

Lisa Milner — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:56:55 PDT

This article explores ways in which the low-budget mockumentary film Kenny (Clayton Jacobson, 2006) evolves the figure of the Australian battler, from its earlier incarnation in The Castle (Rob Sitch, 1997). A surprise hit on Australian screens, Kenny is the quietly humorous story of a portaloo worker, one of the 'ordinary Australians' that the Howard government claimed it spoke for. But whilst Kenny brought some old-fashioned toilet humour to the box office, he was overworked, underappreciated and apprehensive. The article maps the film from the perspective of its Australian audience, to suggest ways in which this comic but uneasy version of the working-class battler responded to socioeconomic change. It scrutinises the circumstances of the film's Australian reception to examine the legacies of an era in which many people became disengaged from politics, the work/family balance seemed harder than ever, and fear was exploited for political advantage. Such an analysis of the representation of the battler figure suggests that both Kenny and The Castle present an idealisation of the battler figure, but they do so differently in response to their sociocultural milieu.

The Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit

Lisa Milner — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:34:11 PST

One of the few trade union film groups in Australia, this Sydney based unit was formed by waterside workers Keith Gow and Jerome 'Jock' Levy, who were joined In 1954 by Norma Disher. They produced eight films for the Federation, and eight other commissioned works, including three for the Building Workers Industrial Union.

'We film the facts': the Waterside Workers' Federation film unit, 1953 – 1958

Lisa Milner — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:09:17 PDT

Fighting through their filmwork: the Waterside Workers’ Federation Film Unit

Lisa Milner — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 07:18:56 PDT

This essay examines the origins and development of a radical Australian film unit of the Cold War, the Waterside Workers’ Federation Film Unit (WWFFU). With the active support of the Communist-led Waterside Workers’ Federation, it arose in the 1950s in response to the repressive policies of a conservative government.

Commos and ratbags: the origins of trade union cinema in Australia

Lisa Milner — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:42:22 PDT

A cultural criticism of Australian films representing the 1950s is presented, focusing on Michel Foucault's theoretical work on the construction of history. Topics addressed include the social and cultural aspects of remembering the past, the ability of storytelling to deconstruct privileged versions of history, and the self-conscious representation of the 1950s by independent Australian filmmakers in the 1970s.

The Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit: the forgotten frontier of the fifties

Martha Ansara et al. — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:42:22 PDT

This paper, written for the Fifth International Documentary Conference, Brisbane, 1997, offers a reappraisal of the historical status of Australian documentary, and, more generally, suggests the value of a revised view of Australian Cinema. In particular, Ansara and Milner look at the work of the Waterside Workers’ Federation Film Unit in the context of the rapid expansion of Australian film-making which took place in the 1950s. At the time, the ‘wharfies’ Film Unit opened a new frontier in documentary film-making in Australia, an endeavour which, in retrospect, provides a source of reflection upon our own documentary practices of today.