Mr David Hanan

Background

After teaching literature at both Monash and Melbourne Universities, and taking a Post-graduate Diploma in Film Studies at University College London, David Hanan established film studies courses in the Dept of Visual Arts at Monash University. In the 1980s he was for six years honorary company secretary of the Melbourne International Film Festival, and in this capacity set up links between the Indonesian film world and Australian film festivals and film makers. He is the editor of Film in South East Asia: Views from the Region (Hanoi: SEAPAVAA and the Vietnam Film Institute, 2001). He has successfully supervised half a dozen PhDs, on a wide variety of topics; done subtitles for more than a dozen Indonesian films; been involved in film preservation projects; and, in addition to his teaching, supervision and research work at Monash, is currently curator of ‘Between Three Worlds Video and DVD’, a division of the Monash Asia Institute Press, that distributes South East Asian films internationally. At Monash he currently teaches film form and film history, Asian Cinema, and video and DVD production.

Research Interests

My main areas of interest are film and popular culture in South East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand); Australian representations of Asia, in newsreels, documentary films and TV current affairs from 1930 to the present; Indian cinema; European and Asian cinema generally; Third World Cinema; alternative distribution frameworks for film.

I am currently writing two books: one is on ways of seeing Indonesian cinema and is tentatively entitled ‘Creative Moments in Indonesian Cinema’; the other is on the representation of Asian countries in Australian newsreels, documentaries, and current affairs programs since 1930. This means that I have a dual sided set of interests: on one side I have an interest in how our neighbouring societies represent themselves, on the other, in how we in Australia represent them (and have represented them) in film, and later in television, over the last seventy five years or so. My first major essay on Indonesian film was on the expression of cultural differences in Teguh Karya’s film November 1828, and this interest in cultural differences is continued in lengthy essays I have written, as seen in an essay comparing the traditional Balinese ‘joget’ dance and the West Javanese ‘ronggeng’ dance as it featured in the 1969 Indonesian film Nji Ronggeng; and secondly in an essay I have written on the popular culture of the poor of Jakarta in the songs and films of the Betawi comedian Benyamin S. My interest in more recent Indonesian cinema, society and politics has led me to write not only a lengthy essay on the fiction films of Garin Nugroho, but to embark upon subtitling (for release on DVD) four major non-fiction films by Garin Nugroho, under the title ‘Political Documentaries and Essay Films by Garin Nugroho 1991-2002’.

This DVD is to be released in November 2007 by the video and DVD distribution centre I established in 2002 as part of the Monash Asia Institute Press, ‘Between Three Worlds Video and DVD’. Between Three Worlds Video and DVD distributes films from every decade of production in Indonesia since independence, except the 1960s, and also films from Thailand and Bangladesh.

I strongly believe that living in the Asia Pacific region, it is important for Australians to come to have some knowledge of our immediately neighbouring societies, including a knowledge of both the richness and difference of their cultures, and of the political, environmental and economic difficulties they face. One way we can begin to do this is to have access to the best works their film-makers have produced. Recognising how difficult it is for Australians to access such works, I set up Between Three Worlds Video and DVD as one way of addressing this problem.

Within this framework I have now begun to design and author DVDs of Indonesian films to which I have been able to negotiate rights, and even re-subtitle for DVD release key works from the Indonesian cinema, if this is deemed necessary. These DVDs include academic essays and/ or study guides on the films, and, on occasions, photographic extras sections that illustrate aspects of the historical or cultural background of the films. One of our most important new releases is the Indonesian teen movie Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (‘What’s Up with Love?’). The Three Worlds Video and DVD website

Regarding my continuing research on the representation of Asia in Australian documentaries, my most recent publication was a paper written for the 2006 Monash University - Calcutta University Post Colonial writing conference. This paper, which has now been published in the July 2007 edition of Meanjin, examines colonialist and orientalist attitudes that can be seen in Australian travel documentaries of the 1930s and 1940s (and in political discourses of the 1940s) in relation to lost opportunities for forging links with many newly emerging Asian nations in the post war period, and culminating in Australia’s participation in the Vietnam war.

PhD Topics Supervised

• Themes and attitudes in selected Australian feature films, 1913-1929
• A psychology of cinema: a viewer centred approach
• Culture and politics in Chinese film melodrama: traditional sacred, moral economy and the Xie Jin mode
• The dialectic of region and nation in the films of the Bengali independents: Ghatak, Ray and Sen
• Historical realism: modes of modernity in Indian cinema 1940-60
• Malay Comedy in a Late Colonial and Post-colonial Context: The Singapore Comedy Films of P. Ramlee, 1957-1964

Research MAs Supervised

• Three Films by Oshima, Nagisa: The Boy; Ceremonies; Dear Summer Sister
• Orientalist Visuality in a Post-Colonial Context: A Critical Examination of Some Recent Asian Films in relation to the Writings of Rey Chow

Selected Publications