‘Modern’ cinematic encounters: Border crossing and environmental transformation in some recent Australian films

ABSTRACT

In Australia (and globally), refugees and ‘the environment’ are major sources of anxiety that define the experience of living in modern times. Contemporary social policy is then a representational technology that speaks to environmental and cross-cultural transactions within ‘modern’ Australian cinematic texts. This article tracks the conversational contours between policy on climate change and border control in Australia and representations of self-other and self-environment relations in Australian film produced in the latter period of the Howard era (1996–2007). Films have frequently sought to mobilize a range of visions and understandings of both security and sustainability, and of the associated productions of policy, identity and space. Such exchanges necessitate critical scrutiny of the politicized cultural contexts that produce them—and an awareness of the normative reassertions that accompany these cinematic mediations of modern Australian experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Australian
• policy
• national identity
• refugee
• Howard government
• environment
• representation