A/Prof
Roger Hillman
Representing Gallipoli on film – from national
to transnational myth?
Gallipoli the event was of course an
experience shared by a number of combatants. But Australia’s memory of it has frequently
claimed special status, even alongside the ‘NZ’ in ‘Anzac’, for Gallipoli
the national myth. Completely different relationships exist now among
the combatants of 1915, and representations of Gallipoli have emerged
recently which themselves reflect more global tendencies. While the
national element of Gallipoli reception remains firm in Australia, the novel Birds without Wings (2004) by Louis de
Bernières, and the documentary film Gallipoli: The Front Line Experience (2005)
byTolga Örnek, present
very different perspectives. The Turkish
director combines perspectives of Australian, New
Zealand, British and Turkish soldiers,
with a voice-over quoting their diaries and letters, alongside documentary
footage and stylized reenactments. Both de Bernières and Örnek offer a new
collective memory of Gallipoli, where the collective is not simply the
sum of nation-states. The film is a world removed from Peter Weir’s
Gallipoli, so iconic for the event’s traces
in the Australian imaginary.
The
topic impinges on a number of recent debates within the discipline of
history. Memory studies, film and history issues, documentary within
film and history, narrative elements in historical accounts, whether
Kokoda should replace Gallipoli as an icon
of nationhood, how Australian history should be taught in the classroom
– these alone make it a rich, but very slippery topic. But perhaps the
major issue to emerge is: how can history,
and how can film and literature, approach myth?
Roger
Hillman is Associate Professor of
Film Studies and German Studies at the ANU. Research publications have
spanned European cinema, German literature, musicology, and narrativity. Most recently he co-authored with German colleagues
a book on transculturality, engaging with
Turkish-German literature and films.
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