• Shino Konishi and Maria Nugent

04 December 2009Shino Konishi and Maria Nugent survey responses to the film’s engagement with Indigenous history in Inside Story

IN MANY WAYS, Baz Luhrmann’s Australia portrays a range of aspects of Aboriginal experience with surprising depth. As two historians based in the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the Australian National University, we were buoyed by the way in which this mainstream, blockbuster epic could portray such a many-sided view of Aboriginal history. But we were somewhat disappointed by the initial public debates about it, which generally elided its complexities and rehashed familiar arguments about historical accuracy versus cinematic licence. We thought the film was worth a more penetrating look, and so have convened a conference in collaboration with the National Museum of Australia...

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