by

Peter Mageros

Description
About the Author
Table of Contents

With Australia’s film industry aligning the battle with Hollywood with its own heroic struggles for the nation – two conspirators in a shared destiny – filmmakers have waged fierce frays to keep their productions on screens.
Peter Mageros’s book reveals how some of the most revered filmmakers from Australia – Longford, Chauvel and Ken G. Hall, among them – have left indelible imprints through heroic images that we still like to watch on big screens.
At first, Australia’s cinema saw itself as modern as the “youthful nation”, where its new medium was among shining lights on the international stage. As the nation made major strides towards its valiant destiny, so too the film industry saw the theme of ‘national progress’ underpinning all discussions about cinema from the 1930s to the 1950s.
The author explores the close connection between mythology and cinema and finds that the theme of ‘heroic film industry’ has defined the last, spanning the twentieth century and persisting well into contemporaneity.
This is a story of heroism, although not always of heroic conquests.

Peter Mageros has graduated with a PhD from the University of Sydney in 2016. This is his second book. The first one, Thunder over the Desert, was published last year and is based on his PhD thesis, which thoroughly investigates the relationship between the film industry and the Anzac legend. Since 2009, Peter has been working as an associate scholar at several universities in Australia, including the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales, the University of Queensland, Griffith University and Macquarie University in Sydney, where he taught journalism and communication.

Peter Mageros is an award-winning radio news reporter. He worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Brisbane for thirteen years, winning the “Best Radio Report” prize at the Queensland Media Awards, in 2002. He also has been awarded for songwriting.

Introduction

Chapter 1 – ‘Welcome to the Movies’
Chapter 2 – Critical Conscience

Part I. THE EARLY FILM INDUSTRY
(1900-1930)

Chapter 3 – ‘In the Beginning…’
Chapter 4 – ‘Modernity’
Chapter 5 – Soldiers and Shepherds of the Cross
Chapter 6 – ‘The Travelling Picture Showman’

Part II. BETWEEN THE WARS
(1920-1940)

Chapter 7 – Great War to the Great Depression
Chapter 8 – The Film Inquiries (1927 and 1934)
Chapter 9 – The National Progress
Chapter 10 – The National Studio: Eftee and Cinesound
Chapter 11 – Heritage, It Isn’t Done and Tall Timbers

Part III. THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND BEYOND
(1940-1960)

Chapter 12 – ‘Season of Passion’
Chapter 13 – The ‘National Film’: A Case Study

References

Details

Paperback: 318 pages
Size: 14 x 21.6 cm
(5.5 x 8.5 in)
Published: December 2021
ISBN: 978-1-9996138-8-4

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