Dr Bruce Isaacs
B.A., University of Sydney
PhD, University of Sydney
Phone: +61 2 9351 3568
Address: Room 305, A26 - R.C. Mills
Email: .
I am interested in a wide range of film studies-related topics: histories of film (with a focus on Hollywood, though I have abiding interests in various ‘New Waves’ and movements), film aesthetics and style, critical approaches to film production, film and popular culture (including the relationship between film and other pop culture art forms such as television, literature and music). I am currently intrigued by various developments in High Concept Hollywood and its evolution of new aesthetic practices, including digital and 3D cinema.
Research Interests
- Film Aesthetics: the legitimacy of ‘Film Style’
- Realism and Spectacle
- American Cinema: Classical Hollywood/Hollywood Renaissance (late 60s to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, 1979) / Hollywood High Concept Cinema
- Auteur Theory, Independence, New Aesthetic Sensibilities
- Digital Cinema and Aesthetics: ‘Future Cinema’
- Film Production Practice – with a focus on screenwriting as a literary and cinematic form
Current Research
- I am in the process of developing a monograph-length work on digital cinema aesthetics and practices entitled ‘The Orientation of Future Cinema’.
- Screenwriting and the ‘cinematicality’ of a literary form
Publications
Books
- Toward a New Film Aesthetic. New York: Continuum Press International, 2008.
Book Chapters & Journal Articles
- ‘A Reification of Spectacle: The Orientation of Future Cinema’. In Matthew Kapell and Steven McVeigh (eds.), Blockbuster Auteur: Themes in the Cinema of James Cameron. McFarland Press – Contracted for publication, 2011.
- ‘A Vision of a Time and Place: Spiritual Humanism and the Utopian Impulse”. In Matthew Kapell (ed.), Star Trek as Myth: Essays on Symbol and Archetype at the Final Frontier. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland Press, 2010: 182-196.
- ‘Screening Australia: Samson and Delilah’. Screen Education 54 (2009): 12-17. [Non-refereed]
- ‘The Birth of a Nation’. Metro 161 (June 2009): 35-40.[Non-refereed]
- ‘The Cinematic Real: Aesthetics and Spectacle’. Sydney Studies in English (October, 2007): 96-124.
- ‘A Survey of Popular and Scholarly Receptions of the Star Wars Franchise’. In Matthew Kapell and John Shelton Lawrence (eds.), Finding the Force in the Star Wars Franchise. New York and Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006.
- ‘Non-Linear Narrative’. In Nicholas Rombes (ed.), New-Punk Cinema. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2005: 126-139. [With Theodore Trost] ‘Story, Product, Franchise: Images of Postmodern Cinema’. In William Doty and Matthew Kapell (eds.). Jacking in to the Matrix Franchise: Cultural Reception and Interpretation. New York: Continuum Press International, 2004: 65-83.
- ‘Popular Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of The Matrix’. New Media Poetics 3 (May 2004).
Conference Papers & Presentations
- Screenwriting: Modernist Impulses in a Cinematic Form’. Cinema, Modernity and Modernism: XVth Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand. Upcoming: Nov 30-Dec 3, 2010.
- ‘Screening the Unconscious’. Annual Film Lecture, Sydney Jung Society. August, 2009 [Invited Lecture]
- ‘Pure Film: Reconceptualising Cinematic Realism’. The XIIIth Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association, Melbourne, November 16-19, 2006.
- ‘Image, Quotation and Cinematic Meaning: Mapping Ideology onto Images’. Eternal Sunshine of the Academic Mind: Symposium. University of Sydney, 2006.
- ‘Popular Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of The Matrix’. Critical Animals Conference, University of Newcastle. 2004
Additional Writing
- Lake Clarence. Feature length film script at 4th draft stage of development [2010]. Shortlisted for a Screen Australia screenwriting grant.
- ‘The Sound of the Fury of Walter Wishwell’. New Writing 1.1 (2004): 38-43.
[Short story] - The Land and Nightfall”. Nebula. March, 2005.
[Poetry] - I have written several HSC Advanced study guides on Film, Film History and Critical Analysis, published by Five Senses Education