Flickerfest (Cultural)

After watching all of the movies at Flickerfest, what cultural differences did you notice from the US and/or from perceived Australian culture?

From a cultural perspective, I did not notice too many differences between the US and Australian culture. What was apparent is that the way Australians are perceived in these short films were different than in most feature films we watched. None of the typical Australian stereotypes were clear in any of these short films. Culturally the only one that was clear could not take place in America was the aboriginal film Yulubidyi. This film was about an older brother trying to protect his disabled younger brother while his father views him as weak and wants him to lead the tribe. This was obviously different culturally since we do not have aboriginal people or culture in our country. There are some similarities between aboriginal culture and native American culture but they still differ in many ways. More importantly, I have seen almost no native American representation in this way in films in the United States. Seeing some acknowledgment to their culture was something I found interesting. I was surprised to see so much Christian influence in many of these short films as well. We have films like this as well I just did not expect it as much in Australia. I have always thought that the Christian theme is the Southern United States or more commonly it is a European film theme. The main difference between these films and American films was the actors had Australian accents. I think this is powerful because it shows that many of these films could have been made anywhere and are unique, not due to where they are filmed but about their subject matter. A film should be judged by how they are filmed and the story over a gimmick. The last difference that was clear is that since all the films were created in Australia many of them took place in Australian cities. The stories could have taken place anywhere though. The setting was interesting and added to the look of many of the stories but for the majority of them, we either did not know where they were located or the location only served to explain the accent and show what they are used to. Many people do what they know and since these are Australian filmmakers it makes sense that they choose places that they know for the setting of their films.

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