Words & Images: Screenwriting Research

The annual international conference on screenwriting research in 2012 is co-organised by the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University together with the Centre for Creative Practice and Cultural Economy at the University of Technology Sydney. The international Screenwriting Research Network is comprised of scholars, writers and practice-based researchers devoted to rethinking the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices. The aim of the conference is to continue, and expand, discussions around the screenplay and to strengthen a rapidly emerging, and global, research network.

Keynote speakers

• Adrian Martin (Monash University)

  Since 1979, Adrian has combined work as a professional writer and film critic with a university career. He was film reviewer for The Age between 1995 and 2006. His numerous books, essays and public lectures have won the Byron Kennedy Award (Australian Film Institute) and the Pascall Prize for Critical Writing. Adrian is the author of four books and hundreds of essays on film, art, television, literature, music, popular and avant-garde culture. He has a particular interest in screenwriting.

  Adrian's work has looked into Australian, American, European and Asian cinemas. He has studied genres including musical, melodrama, thriller and art film. He has analysed auteurs from Sergio Leone and Fritz Lang to Hou Hsiao-hsien and Terrence Malick and has an abiding interest in all marginal, underground and avant-garde cinemas.

  Adrian is currently Associate Professor in Film Studies at Melbourne's Monash University.

• Helen Grace (National Central University, Taiwan)

  A writer, scholar and filmmaker, Helen Grace established the MA Programme in Visual Culture Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Helen has written widely on cinema, photography, contemporary art and new media. She has lectured extensively in Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Singapore and is an award-winning filmmaker and new media producer. Helen's work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

• JJ Murphy (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

  JJ Murphy is a filmmaker and scholar whose work focusses on screenwriting in American Indie Cinema, avant–garde cinema, contemporary art, and the films of Andy Warhol.

  Murphy is the author of two books: Me and You and Memento and Fargo: How Independent Screenplays Work (Continuum, 2007) and The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol (University of California Press, 2012). He has published extensively in film journals.

  His films have screened at various showcases, film festivals, and major art museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of the Moving Image, the National Gallery of Art, The Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), The Barbican Film Centre (London), and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris).

  Murphy is Professor of Film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he teaches screenwriting, film production and film studies.

  More at www.jjmurphy.com (opens an external site)

The key theme of the 2012 conference is ‘Words & Images’. This speaks to the complex, intertwined, and ephemeral relationships between words and images that screenwriters negotiate. In the age of media convergence, screenwriting forms and practices intersect, in new and unpredictable ways, with other forms that unite words and images: the graphic novel, the comic, illustration, the graphic essay, visual arts and interactive media.

The conference includes: morning and afternoon tea, lunch, conference materials and welcome drinks (day 1 only).

Conference program

Registrants need to finalise all payments prior to attending. You will not be able to pay in cash on the day.