Compulsory screening: border protection, migration and the Australian screen

The articles in this issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema represent the response of various Australian film scholars to questions that arose in the wake of the so-called Tampa crisis of August 2001, when Australian naval vessels took possession of 433 asylum seekers on a Norwegian cargo freighter, and a new policy was put into effect. Some of the articles tackle a number of the “aesthetic interventions” in the ethico-political debates relating to border protection. Articles by Jessica Carniel and Lee-Von Kim analyze films about the experience of migrants to Australia in the context of hostility stirred up by the border-protection regime. Contributions by Jane Landman and Tony Hughes-d'Aeth explore the ideological work of films in the 1950s and beyond. Finally, articles by Kieran Dolin and Tanya Dalziell investigate the various imaginary and material lines of demarcation that have constituted separate racial, ethnic, religious, or legal identities within Australia.