AustLit

'In Roger Sandall's Films and Contemporary Anthropology, Lorraine Mortimer argues that while social anthropology and documentary film share historic roots and goals, particularly on the continent of Australia, their trajectories have tended to remain separate. This book reunites film and anthropology through the works of Roger Sandall, a New Zealand-born filmmaker and Columbia University graduate, who was part of the vibrant avant-garde and social documentary film culture in New York in the 1960s. Mentored by Margaret Mead in anthropology and Cecile Starr in fine arts, Sandall was eventually hired as the one-man film unit at the newly formed Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in 1965. In the 1970s, he became a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Sydney. Sandall won First Prize for Documentary at the Venice Film Festival in 1968, yet his films are scarcely known, even in Australia now. Mortimer demonstrates how Sandall's films continue to be relevant to contemporary discussions in the fields of anthropology and documentary studies. She ties exploration of the making and restriction of Sandall's aboriginal films and his nonrestricted films made in Mexico, Australia, and India to the radical history of anthropology and the resurgence today of an expanded, existential-phenomenological anthropology that encompasses the vital connections between humans, animals, things, and our environment.'  (Publication summary)

'Imagined Landscapes teams geocritical analysis with digital visualization techniques to map and interrogate films, novels, and plays in which space and place figure prominently. Drawing upon A Cultural Atlas of Australia, a database-driven interactive digital map that can be used to identify patterns of representation in Australia’s cultural landscape, the book presents an integrated perspective on the translation of space across narrative forms and pioneers new ways of seeing and understanding landscape. It offers fresh insights on cultural topography and spatial history by examining the technical and conceptual challenges of georeferencing fictional and fictionalized places in narratives. Among the items discussed are Wake in Fright, a novel by Kenneth Cook, adapted iconically to the screen and recently onto the stage; the Australian North as a mythic space; spatial and temporal narrative shifts in retellings of the story of Alexander Pearce, a convict who gained notoriety for resorting to cannibalism after escaping from a remote Tasmanian penal colony; travel narratives and road movies set in Western Australia; and the challenges and spatial politics of mapping spaces for which there are no coordinates.' (Publication summary)

'Textual Cultures (published annually since 1983 as Text: An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies) brings together essays by scholars from numerous disciplines and focuses on issues of textual editing, redefinitions of textuality, the history of the book, material culture, and the fusion of codicology with literary, musicological, and art historical interpretation and iconography. It is the official publication of the Society for Textual Scholarship. Membership in the Society includes a subscription to the journal.' (Publication abstract)

'From the islands, the coast, and the far harsh inland of northern Australia they cane, the young Aborigines who while training as teachers at Kormilda College in Darwin conceived and created this book of myths and legends of their own peoples.'

'Depicted here in brilliant, glowing colours and lucidly simple in expression, these tales are part of the rich heritage of the Aboriginal peoples and one which all the young in heart are now privileged to share...'

Djurgurba: Tales from the Spirit Time, written and illustrated wholly by Aborigines whose proud traditions it records, brings together myths and legends from widespriead areas and peoples. It is a happy and unique achievement.' (Source: The Publishers, title page verso)