A celebration was held recently to launch Dr Davinia Thornley's book, Cinema, Cross-Cultural Collaboration, and Criticism: Filming on an Uneven Field, published by Palgrave Macmillan.
The book is a manifesto for a developing area, one that provides a new model for reading films about indigeneity. Davinia Thornley investigates specific production partnerships in Canada, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, using the framework of scholarly and popular criticism to draw conclusions from these collaborative case studies.
In doing so, her book makes two very specific contributions to knowledge: it provides several industry-specific examples of collaboration in production, and it answers the question of how first world critics can approach the films created by indigenous and minority groups.
Encouraging scholars to think about indigenous media more critically reorients indigenous perspectives to a central place in the critical debate.
The films discussed include the world-renowned ISUMA Production's Before Tomorrow; Lousy Little Sixpence, the first documentary to address Australia's 'Stolen Generations'; and contemporary offerings from Aotearoa New Zealand.
Images from the book launch for Cinema, Cross-Cultural Collaboration, and Criticism: Filming on an Uneven Field:
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| Dr Davinia Thornley | MFCO 400 level students (left to right: Emma Bauer, Brianna Kirkham, Angharad Gladding, Emma Thomas, Amie Taua, Lisa Blakie) | MFCO PhD candidate Sally Milner (left) and MFO lecturer Dr Rosemary Overell (right) |