Notes on a Genre to Come: Screenwriting and the 'Thesis-film'

Abstract

This piece draws together two areas: screenwriting and film or video works (to be jointly referred to as ‘films’) that explicitly try to undertake a conceptual practice. Conceptual practice is to be understood here not within the exclusive framework of conceptual or abstract art, but of acts and interventions in theory of the kind that crossover between the academy and the broader culture. Interventions of this kind have (especially in the form of the essay film, and films by humanities academics) been a part of Australian screen culture since at least the 1980s. While these interventions may not appear to be central to much cultural studies work, I want to suggest that cultural studies is intertwined with them in at least three ways.