Media Studies
Book Details

Sheep and the Australian Cinema

Academic Monograph

Deb Verhoeven

"Truthfully I will never see these films in quite the same way again…it is in the best sense a strangely compelling and unsettling book."
Professor Tom O'Regan
University of Queensland

Awards

Shortlisted for the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand (FHAANZ) Research and Writing Awards.

Opinion

"Truthfully I will never see these films in quite the same way again…it is in the best sense a strangely compelling and unsettling book."
Professor Tom O'Regan
University of Queensland

"Sheep and the Australian Cinema must go down as one of the great - if seemingly absurd - titles in the library of Australian studies. Verhoeven does not lose sight of the sense of humour even as the political , historical and cultural resonances of her subject become more and more apparent . . ." Studies in Australasian Cinema

About this Title

In this highly readable study of Australian cinema, Deb Verhoeven explores the relationship between a series of films produced in different periods of Australian history that are linked by a common thread—the repeated image of sheep.

Verhoeven focuses on two key ‘sheep films’: The Squatter’s Daughter (Hall, 1933) and Bitter Springs (Smart, 1950). Both movies are concerned with the national project, in which sheep growing and nation building are seamlessly aligned. But Verhoeven artfully demonstrates that it is precisely in their emphasis on textual re-iteration and repetition that the sheep films critique an otherwise ostensibly 'national' vision.

In the process Verhoeven sheds new light on the importance and implication of discourses of originality in the Australian cinema.

"Truthfully I will never see these films in quite the same way again…it is in the best sense a strangely compelling and unsettling book."
Professor Tom O'Regan
University of Queensland

Table of Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Wool blend: Sheep and the Australian social fabric

Part 1: Sheep thinking or thinking sheep: Philosophy’s animal
within

1. One, two sheep perchance to dream

Part 2: When our clips speak together: The Squatter’s Daughter,
national origins and cultural continuity

2. A gathering of sheep is the scene of a decapitation, or
How Ken G. Hall lost his head

3. When familiarity breeds: Contempt, disability
and national cinema

4. Origins interrupted: Splitting heirs and forebears

Part 3: One man’s meat: Bitter Springs, assimilation and sheep

5. Tea and sympathy and a thirst for sheep

6. Another man’s mutton … Assimilation and Aboriginal agency

7. Rethinking (like) a sheep, acting like a ham

Coda

Filmography

References

Index

About the Author

Dr Deb Verhoeven is a writer, broadcaster, film critic, commentator and lecturer. Between 2000 and 2002 she was CEO of the Australian Film Institute. She is currently Associate Professor of Screen Studies in the School of Applied Communication at RMIT, where she also manages the AFI Research Collection.

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978-0-522-85240-0