Jake Wilson

It takes fifteen minutes of screen time before Karen (Shai Pittman), the young Aboriginal heroine of Beck Cole’s Here I Am, finds a room of her own. Before this, we have seen her riding away from prison in a taxi, blissfully feeling the wind on her face; walking through dark Adelaide streets, clutching a box of treasured possessions; and prostituting herself to a stranger in a pub in exchange fo ... (read more)

Kotcheff’s Wake Jake Wilson   Wake in Fright by Tina Kaufman Currency Press, $16.95 pb, 72 pp, 9780868198644   Eight years after its launch, the Australian Screen Classics series of monographs represents a valuable, ongoing contribution to local film culture – though the notion of a classic, taken too literally, can halt debate at the moment it ought to begin. That said, few cou ... (read more)

Directed by John Boulting in 1947, the original film version of Graham Greene’s thriller Brighton Rock is as honourable an adaptation as anyone could want. The plot may be simplified, but the essentials are all there (Greene himself co-wrote the script), and so is the cheery, grimy atmosphere of a mid-century British seaside resort, captured on location. There are two unforgettable performances, ... (read more)

As his title suggests, Jonathan Rosenbaum tackles two subjects in his latest collection of essays, neither of them easy to define. In an era when films are mostly viewed at home, not on the big screen, cinema can no longer mean what it once did. Cinephilia, too, is an alluring but indefinite concept – love of movies, yes, but not any old love, and probably not the devotion felt by your average f ... (read more)