Description
Book SynopsisThe capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia, Sydney has been represented onscreen since the earliest days of cinema. An eclectic combination of tough inner-city suburbs, beachside communities and green outlying exurbs, Sydney offers many intriguing possibilities to filmmakers. The tensions and differences found among its many multicultural inhabitants, poorer and wealthier suburbs and central business district and beaches are reflected, exaggerated, and critiqued in memorable movies such as The Last Wave, Puberty Blues, Strictly Ballroom and Little Fish, among many others. Sydney is a city where sun, sports and surf rub shoulders with crime, racial tensions and class divides.
The contributors to this collection take readers on a virtual tour of Sydney, from Kings Cross, the city’s red light district and frequent film location, to the famous beaches, to explore how representations in movies have both played into and influenced how we think of these spaces and those that frequent them. Essays also consider the experimental film group UBU Films, who shot shorts and features in and around Sydney’s inner city suburbs during the 1960s and early 1970s, and the Sydney Opera House, one of the world’s most recognizable landmarks, and its role in movies both Australian and international.
Packed with full-colour photographs, this is the first book of its kind to deal specifically with Sydney and film. It will find a grateful audience among film lovers, casual viewers, tourists and film historians.
Table of ContentsEssays:
Sydney: City of the Imagination, Tina Kaufman
The Man from England: Brian Trenchard-Smith in Sydney, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
The World behind the Coke Sign: Jon Hewitt’s Kings Cross, Jack Sargeant
Life’s a Beach…, Deb Verhoeven
Sojourner Sydney: Looking from the Outside, Jane Mills
The Phantasm of the Opera: The Sydney Opera House, Gemma Blackwood
Ubu Films: Sydney’s Underground Radical Culture 1965–72, Lisa French
