| Description |
276 pages ; 30 cm |
| Summary |
John Hughes, a Melbourne-based independent filmmaker, has made over twenty films across four decades. With Nowhere Game (1971), he established a politically oppositional documentary practice. Hughes left school in his early teens but completed a Masters degree thirty years later, whilst making a film about Walter Benjamin, One Way Street (1992). He has taught at tertiary institutions and written for journal publications since the mid 1970s. After making What I Have Written (1995) and After Mabo (1997), Hughes became a commissioning editor at SBS Independent in 1998. He returned to speculative freelance work in 2002. Hughes has taken a leading role in a number of filmmaker organizations including the Melbourne Filmmakers Co-op, JAFS and IFAC. This thesis examines the specific notions of independent film and video that Hughes identified with and adapted across several historical phases |
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Hughes's own research on the Realist and Waterside Workers Federation Film units of the 1940s and 50s, for Film-Work (1980) and The Archive Project (2006), expands this canvas beyond the period of his own activity. Hughes's survival as a filmmaker and his unique relationship to the mainstream film and television industries is examined through the production history of his often idiosyncratic and stylised films. His critical perspectives on the politics of representation and his use of reflexive, hybrid formal systems are explored through analysis of his films, writings and influences. Hughes has both opposed the contemporary avant-garde and had his work recognised within it. Peter Wollen's notion of two avant-gardes is employed to unravel this paradox within the complex history and politics of Melbourne film culture |
| Notes |
Published on demand |
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Thesis (M.A.) -- La Trobe Univesity , 2004 |
| Bibliography |
Bibliography: pages 249-176 |
| Notes |
If previously published give details of the original work here |
| Subject |
Hughes, John -- Criticism and interpretation.
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Motion pictures -- Australia -- History.
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Experimental films -- Australia.
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| Genre/Form |
Academic theses.
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| Author |
La Trobe University.
Theses. School of Communication, Art and Critical Enquiry Cinema Studies Program
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