AustLit

'This paper examines Peter Duncan's film Unfinished Sky as an example of post-national Australian cinema. Addressing dominant frameworks in Australian film criticism that focus on the concept of the national, the paper argues that the 'national' has in fact been reconfigured in the cinema of the new millennium, placing it within a post-national or regional environment. In several recent Australian films there has been an increased engagement with the region, both in terms of the representation of regional areas outside Australia, such as Asia and the Middle East, as well as demonstrating a growing sense of openness to global influences and connections in remote or regional settings within the country. Addressing these various shifts, the paper questions how relevant is it to continue to define Australian cinema in terms of the 'national', as has long been dominant in Australian film scholarship, when aiming to take into account different races, ethnicities, and identities appearing on screen today. This is especially worth reconsidering since the demise of multiculturalism from the mid to late 1990s as an official cultural policy situated squarely within the framework of the national.' (Author's abstract)