AustLit

'In outstanding films that are sharply focused on unusual women Jane Campion has gained worldwide admiration and respect. This New Zealand director first attracted international attention with her 1989 film Sweetie, an acerbic study of two sisters in a wildly dysfunctional family. She followed this in 1990 with the television miniseries An Angel at My Table, based on the autobiography of New Zealand author Janet Frame. Subsequently released in theatres, the film chronicles the early trials of the young writer. Poor, timid, and physically awkward, Frame was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and was scheduled for a lobotomy, but her success as a writer enabled her to escape this fate and won her fame and acceptance. In 1993 in yet another story about an extraordinary woman, Campion made the award-winning film The Piano. It starred Holly Hunter as the Victorian mail-order bride who refuses to speak. Arriving in New Zealand with her young daughter, the young Scottish widow confronts isolation in the wilderness and communicates only via her piano until she finds real love in her husband's neighbor, played by Harvey Keitel. Campion next adapted Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, starring Nicole Kidman as Isabel Archer, a young American heiress seduced by a decadent pair of expatriates living in Italy.

'In this collection of interviews Campion speaks of these films that have given women a revival as a strong screen presence. Campion tells of her early life in Wellington and of her training as a filmmaker in the 1980s at the Australian School of Film and Television. She speaks of those who have influenced her style and her experiences in making movies.

'Campion received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1993 and was the first woman director to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes.' (Publication summary)

'Peter Weir: Interviews is the first volume of interviews to be published on the esteemed Australian director. Although Weir (b. 1944) has acquired a reputation of being guarded about his life and work, these interviews by archivists, journalists, historians, and colleagues reveal him to be a most amiable and forthcoming subject. He talks about "the precious desperation of the art, the madness, the willingness to experiment" in all his films; the adaptation process from novel to film, when he tells a scriptwriter, "I'm going to eat your script; it's going to be part of my blood!"; and his self-assessment as "merely a jester, with cap and bells, going from court to court." He is encouraged, even provoked to tell his own story, from his childhood in a Sydney suburb in the 1950s, to his apprenticeship in the Australian television industry in the 1960s, his preparations to shoot his first features in the early 1970s, his international celebrity in Australia and Hollywood. An extensive new interview details his current plans for a new film.

'Interviews discuss Weir's diverse and impressive range of work–his earlier films Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, Gallipoli, and The Year of Living Dangerously, as well as Academy Award-nominated Witness, Dead Poets Society, Green Card, The Truman Show, and Master and Commander. This book confirms that the trajectory of Weir's life and work parallels and embodies Australia's own quest to define and express a historical and cultural identity.' (Publication summary)

'Though he has made only five films in two decades–Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, and the Oscar-nominated films Moulin Rouge!, Australia, and The Great Gatsby–Australian writer-director Baz Luhrmann (b. 1962) is an internationally known brand name. His name has even entered the English language as a verb, as in "to Baz things up," meaning "to decorate them with an exuberant flourish." Celebrated by some, loathed by others, his work is underscored by what has been described as "an aesthetic of artifice" and is notable for both its glittering surfaces and recurring concerns.

'In this collection of interviews, Luhrmann discusses his methods and his motives, explaining what has been important to him and his collaborators from the start and how he has been able to maintain an independence from the studios that have backed his films. He also speaks about his other artistic endeavors, including stage productions of La Bohème and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and his wife and collaborative partner Catherine Martin, who has received four Academy Awards for her work with Luhrmann.' (Publication summary)