PICNIC @ 50

The Sheffield Centre for Research in Film (SCRIF) | Annual Symposium

20th June 2025, 9am-5pm (UK)

The University of Sheffield/Hybrid Event

This event marks fifty years since the release of a landmark film of the Australian film revival, Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). Brian McFarlane commented on Picnic’s ‘euphoric over-valuation’ at the time of its release, but Weir’s film became a flagship production of the ‘New Wave’. It cemented Weir’s position within the cinema revival, established the ‘AFC genre’ of respectable literary adaptations, but also contributed to the vein of horror film and ‘Gothic’ cinema which has distinguished Australian film production ever since. As a critical success and a touchstone for informed audiences of Australian cinema, this event asks: How has Picnic at Hanging Rock been understood  and read? How should it be re-read or repositioned? What does its mix of art and horror say about Australian and other national cinemas? How might the film and its fame be compared with other canonised examples of national cinema and national cinematic discourse? Are there comparable remembered (or forgotten) Australian films of similar or greater importance? Does its model and record elicit comparisons with the texts and contexts of other post-colonial and settler cinemas (such as Canada, South Africa or New Zealand)? Where does Australian cinema stand, 50 years later?

Our guest speaker for this event will be Dr Stephen Morgan (King’s College, London).

Papers of approximately 20 mins. duration are invited on topics related to the reception, (re)interpretation, aesthetics and legacy of Picnic at Hanging Rock but also to the subjects of its Australian cinema context, history, culture and production, and to the significance and understanding of landmark films more widely.  Subjects may include but are not restricted to:

  • The appraisal, reappraisal or refutation of Picnic at Hanging Rock as national cinematic text

  • The position of Picnic at Hanging Rock within the international canon

  • The influence of Picnic at Hanging Rock in Australia and beyond

  • The place of horror, Gothic and/or genre cinema in Australian and other national cinemas

  • The significance of settler colonialism, race/indigeneity and gender in Australia’s national cinema

  • The state and status of the ‘new’ Australian cinema after over fifty years of production

  • The influence of auteurism and art film in national cinema discourses

  • The continuing importance of national landmark films - of the 1970s or other eras

Please send proposals (300 words max.) for papers and brief bio details by Friday 2nd May 2025 to: Jonathan Rayner (j.r.rayner@shef.ac.uk)

Call for Chapters (Round Two) - Screening Diasporas in the Pacific: Voices, Narratives and Mobilities

In response to multiple requests, we are excited to extend the call for chapters and warmly invite submissions from practitioners, scholars, PhD candidates, and both emerging and established researchers with an interest or connection to the Pacific regions. We encourage contributions that bring fresh and diverse perspectives on communities throughout the Pacific, including but not limited to:

  • Asian diasporic filmmaking in New Zealand, Australia and Hawai‘i 

  • Films and filmmaking from Micronesia (Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Marshall Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) 

  • Filmmaking from  Melanesia (Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, Kanaky New Caledonia) 

  • Films and filmmaking from Polynesia (Samoa, Tonga and Rapa Nui) 

  • Mixed diasporic groups such as Chinese-Samoan and Indian-Fijian communities (etc.)

 

We are interested in submissions to any of these fields: 

screen studies, screen production, screen practice, creative practice research (practice-led research); 

screen audiences, film festivals, individual filmmakers, industry research, screen policy, funding bodies, fiction, non-fiction, hybrid screen production, on screen representation, transnational partnerships in screen industries, the role of institutions, production companies, and screen collectives.

 

We look forward to receiving contributions that enrich and expand our understanding of these vibrant and interconnected mobilities.

 

Timeline/Workflow (round 2):

Proposal Submission Deadline: 15 Nov 2024

Notification of Acceptance: 30 Nov 2024

Full Chapter Submission Deadline: 31 March 2025

Submission Details:

Abstracts of up to 300 words and a biography of 100 words should be emailed to:

Arezou Zalipour at arezou.zalipour@aut.ac.nz

Duncan Caillard at duncan.caillard@aut.ac.nz

Securing Australian Content in the Streaming Era (11th-13th September 2024): three days of events across RMIT and ACMI

It has been nearly ten years since streaming arrived in Australia, with Stan and Netflix launching on our shores in early 2015. The Streaming Industries and Genres Network (SIGN) based at RMIT University is running three days of events to reflect on how a decade of streaming in Australia has changed the local screen entertainment landscape. Alongside research experts, hear from screen industry leaders, policymakers, creators, and cultural commentators as we think through strategies for the next decade of streaming in Australia.

Wednesday 11 September 2024 (9am-5pm): RMIT University

A series of panels will consider the current state and future of streaming video research methods, streaming diversity, and how to understand streaming audiences.

Thursday 12 September 2024 (9-5pm + screening): ACMI

Organised around key screen genres (drama, comedy, reality TV, sport, kids/youth media, and film), this ACMI partnered event features roundtable discussion panels with key screen industry leaders and creatives, and a screening designed to catalyse conversation. We will look forward as well as back to consider how we can future-proof our local screen industries in an increasingly global marketplace.

Friday 13 September 2024 (9am-1pm): RMIT University

This half-day workshop, 'Streaming and Youth Audiences', will look at how legacy media (film, television), social media entertainment and other participatory online media are navigating child and youth content and audiences in the era of on-demand viewing and user-generated content. Screen industry leaders and creatives will offer brief provocations to kick off this workshop.

Call for Chapters

Screening Diasporas in the Pacific: Voices, Narratives and Mobilities

Editors:

A/Prof Arezou Zalipour and Dr Duncan Caillard

Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Aotearoa New Zealand

Timeline/Workflow:

Proposal Submission Deadline: September 30th 2024

Notification of Acceptance: October 15th 2024

Full Chapter Submission Deadline: January 31st 2024

The history of the Pacific has been shaped by waves of human mobility and cultural exchange, from millenia of Micronesian, Melanesian and Polynesian wayfaring, to European colonisation and generations of migrants from Asia, Europe and the Americas. Across these communities, film has emerged as a powerful medium for exploring questions of identity, culture and belonging amidst changing socio-political realities. From the experiences of Samoan diasporas living in Aotearoa New Zealand in Albert Wendt’s Sons for the Return Home (1979) and Tusi Tamases’s One Thousand Ropes (2017), and Tongan diaspora in Vea Mafile'o’s Lea Tupu'anga/Mother Tongue (2023) to the struggles of Japanese-American migration in Hawai’i across Picture Bride (1995) and I Was A Simple Man (2021), stories by and about diasporic communities within the Pacific have played a key part in the region’s cinema. In recent years, Pacific-focused film festivals and international funding organisations have forged fresh connections across the region, establishing dynamic new contact points between creators, audiences, and the industries. These collaborations and initiatives have catalysed vibrant voices, narratives and mobilities in ways previously unexplored.

This edited collection will examine how diverse communities that have moved within and across the Pacific have used moving images to explore the dynamic interplay of cultures, ethnicities and communities, contributing to a growing body of literature on diasporic screen studies. Hamid Naficy’s Home, Exile, Homeland (1999) brought together prominent theorists of cinematic migration, setting the stage for his seminal book An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking in 2001. Berghahn and Sternberg’s European Cinema in Motion (2010) explored post national stories of migration in European cinema. Rondilla Spickard and Hippolite Wright’s Pacific Diaspora (2002) explored the interlaced stories of migration and movement that have defined the region, themes explored further in Zalipour’s Migrant and Diasporic Film and Filmmaking in New Zealand (2019), the first collection to focus on multi-cultural screen representations and practices in New Zealand.

Screening Diasporas in the Pacific: Voices, Narratives and Mobilities seeks to shift static conceptions of culture and society towards one that prioritises motion, flux, and the hybridisation of identities, stories and experiences. It will bring together case studies of screen voices, narratives and productions shaped by transnational flows that transcend geographic boundaries across the Pacific.

We conceptualise the Pacific region as a site of mobility, contact and connection for various Indigenous Pacific Islander and diasporic communities together navigating their identities across multiple spaces through cultural production. Screening Diasporas in the Pacific: Voices, Narratives and Mobilities will offer a comprehensive examination of how makers and storytellers in and of the Pacific shape on-screen representations and are situated within global screen industries. We welcome studies of diverse forms of screen work and culture, including (but not limited to) feature film production, short films, television series, screen-based installations, animation, and film festival and audience studies.

We invite contributions from both established and emerging writers, scholars and practitioners. We are currently in conversation with academic publishers.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

· Fiction and non-fiction screen works by and/or about any diasporas in the Pacific region

· Creative practices among diasporic filmmakers

· Collaboration within and between diasporic communities in the Pacific

· Transnational partnerships and connections between and within the Pacific region

· Social, cultural and political dimensions of moving image production in the Pacific

· Pacific diasporas in national film industries including (but not limited to) Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the United States

· Pacific-focused film festivals, production companies, screen collectives, industries and institutions

· Studies of specific films, directors, producers, actors, etc.

· Audience studies and viewership practices

Submission Details:

Abstracts of up to 300 words and a biography of 100 words should be emailed to:

Arezou Zalipour at arezou.zalipour@aut.ac.nz

Duncan Caillard at duncan.caillard@aut.ac.nz

by September 30th 2024. Decisions will be returned October 15th 2024.

The chapter drafts of 4,500-7,000 words (including references) are due January 31st 2025.