Bill Kerr: "The boy from Wagga Wagga"

A conference paper presentation at the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference at Victoria University, in December 2012. Hosted by Victoria University, the 2012 conference was convened by Victoria University, La Trobe University and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Papers were published online through Victoria University, and widely e-published across the Victoria University, Monash University, RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) University sectors, and in Britain, and New Zealand. (See attached link to Victoria University, in Melbourne.) My paper was presented to the FHAANZ biennale conference on 5th December, 2012, before an international audience, consisting of British, Australian, New Zealand and European filmmakers, cultural theorists, and historians - my theme was speculative histories. The research explores screen memory of the British empire - against the historical memory of this period, including the sexual transgressions of the clergy. The paper compared early Australian film culture from the Bill Kerr film "The Silence of Dean Maitland" (1934), as a platform to examine depiction of the British empire in films representing the past, and shifts over 50 years in Australian cinema through concepts of 'struggle' and the non-British story as history.