Imagined Geographies: Women's Negotiation of Space in Contemporary Australian Cinema is an exploration of the nexus between gender and locale in films from the last decade, 1988-98. This thesis examines the way meaning is made through the negotiation of diverse geographies by central female protagonists in a selection of recent Australian feature films. The films I analyse were predominantly produced by female writers and/or directors. In the context of Australian Cinema, locale is an area much talked about but little theorised. It is an issue which remains in the background of much scholarship and is often tangential to many arguments but rarely constructed as a central concern. Where it is foregrounded, as in Ross Gibson's work, it is reduced to the significance of landscape or 'natural locations' rather than examining the diversity of its manifestations. Two notable but related spatial shifts have occurred in Australian cinema of the 1990s. The first is a change in industrial practice. Female artists are now creating spaces for themselves in mainstream feature filmmaking - spaces traditionally occupied by men. This trend is away from constructions of a distinctly feminist cinema or counter-cinema which was identifiable in the 1970s. Second, there is a shift in the character of on-screen space. The presence of growing numbers of women writers, directors and producers in the Australian film industry is shifting the cinema's focus away from traditional 'masculine' topographies - the pub, the prison and the outback - thus allowing explorations of other spaces and visions to develop. I am arguing therefore that there is a feminization ofspace occurring in Australian cinema. In this thesis I investigate representations of so-called traditional 'feminine' or domestic domains. The place of the gendered body and embodiment in films is a central concern and is theorised in the first chapter. As we move through the thesis chapters, sexed bodies enacting gender in a variety of ways and in different zones - the car, the house, the suburb and the country town - will be explored. Through these analyses I examine the methods some film directors employ to problematize space in such a way that their work overcomes the limitations of its previously dominant representations. This thesis is primarily an attempt to open up the field of criticism to acknowledge the diversity of locales which exist within the rich tapestry of Australian Cinema.

‘Extraordinary Undercurrents: Australian Cinema, Genre and the Everyday’ investigates how the critical uptake of genre-based cinema has been incorporated into the cultural and industrial rubric of Australian national cinema. The thesis offers, in part, a revaluation of theoretically under-emphasized texts (as well as texts that have been the subject of much higher levels of scrutiny), in order to establish recurrent threads within Australian cinema. In doing this, the thesis offers new and original knowledge in the form of developing a perspective for a revised critical and theoretical analysis of genre cinema within Australian cinema, challenging the presumption of the kinds of texts that can be seen as articulating the nation. The groups of films examined herein form nodes through which a network of important and divergent ideas about nation, national identity and social organization come together in the form of narrative and thematic undercurrents. These (generally malevolent) undercurrents are articulated in the filmic representation of a range of conventional personal, social and cultural dichotomies, and of particular interest are the events, characters and narratives in which the everyday is confronted by the abstract, abject and uncanny. The undercurrents I identify are shown as the textual sites in which transgression - both inside and outside the frame - and intertextuality are collocated, representing the convergence of material which simultaneously operates outside of genres, while reinforcing textual similarity. The undercurrents I identify provide a theoretical direction in analysing interaction between national cinema, culture and identity

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-05, Section: A, page: 1958. Adviser: Maryellen Bieder. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 12, 2008)."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of English and the Program of American Studies, 2007. / Title page from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 18, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-12, Section: A, page: 4369. Advisers: Jonathan Elmer; Joss Marsh.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Mass Communications, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-10, Section: A, page: 4280. Adviser: Peter Bondanella. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 20, 2008).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Cornell University, 2007. / (UMI)AAI3276808. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-08, Section: A, page: 3407.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Telecommunications, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 7, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-10, Section: A, page: 3688. Adviser: David Waterman.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture and American Studies, 2005. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-11, Section: A, page: 3842. Adviser: Joan C. Hawkins. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 10, 2006).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2371. Adviser: Cameron McCarthy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 329-354) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

O êxito de uma obra artística autêntica depende de vários mecanismos sociais que possibilitem sua permanência. Muito além de comprovar qualidade, o autor precisa deixar claras as condições de sua proposta diante do universo criativo que elegeu e, sobretudo, aprender o funcionamento de suas regras. Assimiladas, ele deve - a cada novo trabalho - articular contínuas negociações que viabilizem a ampliação da mensagem produzida. É o que tem feito Pedro Almodóvar no decorrer de sua trajetória no cinema, desde a estréia do primeiro longa-metragem no circuito comercial em 1980. Esta análise demonstra como foram - e são - os caminhos - complexos e estreitos - dentro do campo cinematográfico que o conduziram ao sucesso. / The outcome of any authentic artistic work depends on various social mechanisms that make its permanence possible. More than just validating quality, an author needs to highlight the conditions of his proposal against the creative universe that he has chosen and, more than anything, to learn the functionality of its rules. Once this is assimilated, the must - in every single new work - articulate continuous negotiations that make possible an extension of the resulting message. That is what Pedro Almodóvar has done throughout his cinematic career since his first long film was released to the commercial circuit in 1980. This analysis highlights how cinematographic fields were complex and narrow in the past and continues to be - paths that have nonetheless led him to succeed.