A study of the Tasmanian landscape in/through film may be of interest.
Particularly in its representation as gothic in The Tale of Ruby Rose
and One Hand Clapping, and the novel Gould's Book of Fish.  Furthermore
in light of its initial viewing, when white people first invaded, in
terms of the picturesque - perhaps due to the fire-stick-farming by the
indigenous peoples of the island.  Contemporary deep ecology movements
add yet another layer to this intense (social)landscape.

Just an idea,

nils

On Tuesday, February 18, 2003, at 04:41  AM, Mark Jancovich wrote:

> Cinematic Countrysides
>
> Edited by Robert Fish, University of Nottingham, UK
>
> There is an extensive literature on cinema and the city, most notably
> Clarkes The Cinematic City. The following volume will operate as a
> counterpoint to this body of work, and begin to foster a literature on
> (what
> is often constituted as) the citys other: the rural. While film
> present us
> with numerous representations of rural worlds, cinema is also bound up
> with
> a series of material geographies in which films are not, and never have
> been, merely consumed within urban spaces. As Robert Allen has
> repeatedly
> stressed, cinema has never been simply an urban phenomenon. In the
> process,
> the book will seek to problematicise the distinction between the urban
> and
> the rural, in which the former has frequently been equated with
> dynamism,
> difference and the future, and the latter with the inert, homogeneity
> and
> the past.  The volume will examine constructions of the rural that have
> present this as an idyll consigned to a mythic golden age (Brigadoon),
> or
> inversely as a degenerate backwater (Texas Chainsaw Massacre).  It will
> involve a comparative analysis of different countysides, considering
> the
> various ways in which countrysides have been imagined in different
> national,
> regional and historical contexts. However, unlike much of the work on
> cinema
> and the city, the volume will go beyond questions of representation and
> critic-driven analyses of the formal and the textual, to investigate
> the
> contexts of production, mediation and consumption in which they take
> shape
> and assert influence.
>
> For example, articles might cover:
>
> s The geographical organization of cultural industries and the
> production of
> cinematic countrysides
> s The marketing of rural places to cultural industries through
> regional film
> commissions, etc.
> s The technical and creative practices involved in the production of
> cinematic countrysides
> s The cultural histories within which particular representations of the
> countryside are produced
> s The countryside as imagined by outsiders (whether from the city,
> other
> countries, other times.)
> s Genre and the countryside (horror and the countryside; comedy and the
> countryside; the thriller and the countryside; the road movie etc.)
> s The cultural politics of cinematic representations of the countryside
> (identitifications and antagonisms of gender, class and ethnicity etc.)
> s Relationships between nation, regionality and rurality in cinematic
> representations
> s The intertextual relations of rural films (including relationships
> between
> films and textual reworkings  within publicity, marketing literature)
> s Rural exhibition and display practices; travelling cinema
> s Cinematic countrysides and audience identifications; readings of the
> rural
> audience
> s Social and material transformation of rural areas through cinematic
> representation (such as tourism - New Zealand after Lord of the Rings,
> etc.
> - and migration)
>
> Schedule for Completion
>
> Proposals Due by 1 May, 2003. Selection of proposals by 1 July 2003.
> Manuscripts due by 1 February 2004. Requests for revisions will be
> made by 1
> May 2004. Final Versions due by 1 July 2004. Submission to press 1
> September
> 2004.
>
> Dr Robert Fish
> Lecturer in Human Geography
> School of Geography
> University of Nottingham
> University Park
> Nottingham
> NG7 1LP
>
> Tel: + 44 (0) 115 951 5455
> Fax: + 44 (0) 115 951 5249
> Eml: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>      --- from list [log in to unmask] ---
>

__________________
Nils Crompton
29 Macdonald Street
Erskineville, NSW 2043
mob. 0415 230 195
home. 02 9590 7735
work. 02 9252 4142
http://homepage.mac.com/nilscrompton/

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