Table of contents for Autumn 2015 (77) in Screen Education

The old adage ‘you can’t be it if you can’t see it’ dances around inside my head as director Robert Connolly speaks to the semi-captive audience in attendance after an early festival screening of his film Paper Planes (2014). Half of the viewers aren’t paying attention. They are children – the film’s intended audience – and they’ve been invited to take to the stage and throw paper planes of their own creation around the auditorium. Several hit me in the head as I try to listen and take notes. ‘I wanted to make a fun film. I didn’t want it to be a naturalistic drama, I wanted it to be a bit heightened,’ Connolly tells the adults. ‘Heightened’ is appropriate. Paper Planes uses computer-generated imagery (CGI) and several visual effects,…

One would be hard-pressed to name a more idiosyncratic duo of filmmakers currently working in Hollywood than the Coen brothers.1 Over their thirty-year filmmaking careers, Joel and Ethan Coen have produced a body of work that displays remarkable continuities, yet is riddled with contradictions. Few other creative minds could have conceived of such critically acclaimed works as Fargo (1996) and No Country for Old Men (2007) alongside such unclassifiable cultural melanges as The Big Lebowski (1998) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), but the Coen brothers are in no way typical filmmakers. Joel (born 1954) and Ethan (born 1957) spent their youth in suburban Minneapolis – a long way from the sunny climes of Hollywood, yet also the birthplace of such fellow cultural luminaries as Bob Dylan, Prince and…

There is a reason that allegories have endured as a narrative device and will continue to stay relevant to storytellers and filmmakers in the future. Allegories provide access to complex ideas through simple narratives. They delve into the social, political, cultural, moral and ethical issues of the time and reflect the writer’s or filmmaker’s worldview on a particular topic. They consider the big issues and convey these in ways that make audiences think both literally and symbolically. Allegories can be a highly effective mode of storytelling for young people to both study and produce, as they encourage students to think more deeply about moral problems and convey their social messages through carefully crafted plots with layered meaning. No matter what medium is used to communicate socio-political or moral ideas, the…

Established in Sydney in 1976, the School of Audio Engineering (SAE) was originally an exclusive audio engineering institute. By 1982, SAE had campuses in Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, while its Byron Bay campus – a purpose-built audio-production facility, and its current headquarters – opened in 2003. In 2004, SAE acquired Qantm College – a specialist digital-media training institution – and added animation, game design, film production, web development and graphic design to its suite of courses. The institute has continued to expand, and now boasts fifty-three campuses in twenty-seven countries throughout the world as part of the SAE International network. Students at SAE Qantm are given access to a range of equipment and facilities, though these differ across campuses. The Brisbane campus houses an industry-standard film and post-production studio,…

Released to critical acclaim in 1991, Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton) was lauded as that year’s Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989), a film that depicted black communities on screen with ostensible realism while also delivering entertainment and box-office returns. Critics heralded the 23-year-old Singleton as a powerful new African-American voice. In The New York Times, Janet Maslin called it ‘terrifically confident’,1 while Roger Ebert noted it was ‘a human drama of rare power’.2 It grossed nearly US$60 million at the US box office, and Singleton was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director at the 1992 Academy Awards. The film presents a world where gang violence is the exclusive result of black men growing up in unstable families and making bad choices. A coming-of-age story about…

The events of Roman Polanski’s intriguing life can often be detected in his films. In this piece, his film Macbeth (1971) – about the eponymous Shakespearean character (Jon Finch) who is racked by guilt after murdering the incumbent king, Duncan (Nicholas Selby), to seize the crown for himself – is examined in reference to two disturbing incidents that occurred in the director’s life. The first of these is the death of his mother, and the second, which took place twenty years later, is the murder of his wife, rising actor Sharon Tate. The films that Polanski made after Tate’s murder express a darker ambience, depicting the reality of fear, paranoia and violence. In addition to personal tragedy, these films reflect the changing face of a troubled America during the 1970s.…

The Metropolitan Opera HD The Merry Widow The great Renée Fleming stars as the beguiling femme fatale who captivates all Paris in Lehár’s enchanting operetta, seen in a new staging by Broadway virtuoso director and choreographer Susan Stroman (The Producers, Oklahoma!). Stroman and her design team of Julian Crouch (Satyagraha, The Enchanted Island) and costume designer William Ivey Long (Cinderella, Grey Gardens) have created an art-nouveau setting that climaxes with singing and dancing grisettes at the legendary Maxim’s. Nathan Gunn co-stars as Danilo and Kelli O’Hara is Valencienne. Andrew Davis conducts. LIMITED SEASON from March 14 ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY Love’s Labour’s Won Presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company, captured live from Stratford upon Avon. Autumn 1918. A group of soldiers return from the trenches. The worldweary Benedick and his friend…

Based on Reif Larsen’s critically acclaimed novel The Selected Works of TS Spivet, published in 2009, The Young and Prodigious TS Spivet (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2013) is the latest whimsical tale from the director of The City of Lost Children (1995), Amélie (2001) and A Very Long Engagement (2004). TS Spivet (Kyle Catlett) is a ten-year-old genius and our narrator. One of the film’s most prominent themes is finding, or being given the opportunity to become, the voice of your own story, and this plays out as TS struggles to be heard or understood in his life. He recounts growing up on a ranch with his absorbed scientist-mother, Dr Clair (Helena Bonham Carter), who has devoted herself to finding a previously undiscovered beetle; his morose, monosyllabic father (Callum Keith Rennie), who…

When President Barack Obama assumed office in 2009, he took the unusual step of snubbing America’s most popular news network. Rather than attempting to engage with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, he described the network as ‘destructive’, essentially treating it as a hostile power.1 His communication strategist Anita Dunn was even more explicit: ‘The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party […] let’s not pretend they’re a news organization like CNN is.’2 Obama’s acknowledgement that some areas of the media are ‘friendly’ and others are ‘hostile’ seems to run contrary to the idea of journalistic objectivity – and certainly contrary to Fox’s insistence that its coverage is ‘Fair & Balanced’. Instead, it’s a clear affirmation…

Anyone who has done even a cursory Google search will know that there are literally thousands of film festivals all over the world, each one hungry for content from up-and-coming or established filmmakers. So getting your short film into a festival should be a piece of cake, right? Well, not necessarily. Over the last fifteen years or so, I have submitted short films to hundreds of festivals and had dozens of screenings, which is not a bad strike rate, but gives you some idea of how many unsuccessful submissions you may have ahead of you. I have also been involved with a number of film festivals and competitions as both a programmer and a judge. Along the way I’ve learned some hard and valuable lessons. Here are some of the…

SHINY THINGS EDUCATIONAL APPS http://www.getshinythings.com Cost: A$2.49 (most individual apps) A$3.79 (Quick Maths Jr., Shapelab) A$1.29 (Match Blitz) A$4.99 (app bundle that includes Quick Maths, Quick Maths+, Quick Fractions and Quick Clocks) Like Shiny Things founder Mat Peterson, I am a big believer that game-enhanced learning complements traditional teaching methods and injects much-needed enthusiasm into the classroom. Peterson and his team have developed a suite of age-appropriate iOS maths apps that not only do just that, but also refresh a subject area that has traditionally had an image problem. The latest report from the Australian Government’s Productivity Commission reveals that almost a quarter of Australians are able to perform only basic mathematical tasks like counting. This issue is reinforced by business groups, who have consistently found that poor numeracy skills…

In the final scene of Richard Linklater’s indie epic, Boyhood (2014), Mason (Ellar Coltrane), the titular boy, hikes through Texas’ Big Bend National Park. It is the first day of college, the beginning of the next chapter in his life. Joined by new friends – strangers, really – Mason watches the sun set over limestone canyons. ‘You know how everyone talks about seizing the moment?’ a girl he’s just met asks. Contrary to common belief, she concludes, it is, in fact, the moment that seizes you. Slightly stoned, Mason has a quiet epiphany of the kind that comes so easily to teenagers but is slowly strangled as adulthood asserts its grip: ‘Yeah, I know, it’s constant. It’s like it’s always right now, you know?’ Meanwhile, also under the influence of…

Since ancient times the beehive has been regarded as an intriguing model for human society. Operating on a three-tiered caste system of queen bee, worker honey bees and drones, each bee works selflessly for the mutual benefit of every other member of the hive. Worker bees (all female) live a brief six weeks during the busy summer months (as opposed to four to nine months in the winter) and literally work themselves to death. The male drones lead an equally short and utilitarian life: born only to mate with the queen, death results shortly afterwards when their barbed reproductive organ detaches. If they fail in this duty, as they are of no use in the winter, drones are expelled from the hive in the autumn. In a human context, the…

The mythology surrounding Lars von Trier looms large over each film he directs. The Danish enfant terrible of European cinema who co-founded the Dogme 95 film movement has always been adept at courting notoriety and polarising public opinion. He is a master manipulator of audiences, critics and academics, and his work is often highly divisive, as are perceptions of the director himself, which range from self-obsessed narcissist to mischievous provocateur to genius. So indelible is his imprint that it is often difficult to extricate the presence of the auteur from an analysis of the film. Melancholia (2011) is arguably von Trier’s most ‘mainstream’ film, a fact that he loudly bemoaned on its initial release. While such self-criticism would be anathema to most directors’ publicity circuits, here it is served up…

Female police and private detectives are becoming an increasingly popular presence in TV crime series. From Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) in Prime Suspect and Amy Harris (Elaine Cassidy) in The Ghost Squad to Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) in The Bridge and Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl) in The Killing, the female detective is, in part, a product of postfeminist media culture in which ‘female-centred’ narratives predominate.1 The debate about the role of gender in the TV crime genre follows on from that which has taken place around feminist crime literature (with regard to the writings of Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton and Katherine V Forrest) and film (Kathryn Bigelow’s 1989 Blue Steel and Jane Campion’s 2003 In the Cut), as well as around feminist interpretations of other traditionally ‘masculine’ genres such as…