Imagining Colonial Space in Regional Queensland: film and governance

Abstract

A series of films commissioned by the Queensland government in 1898 were made, showing a variety of scenes of metropolitan Brisbane and rural regions of Queensland. This paper examines some of these films in terms of the way they constitute a ‘colonial imaginary ’ involving the positioning of the spectator in time and space. By drawing on Metz’s ideas of the cinema apparatus, as well as Foucault’s arguments concerning the surveillance of space, the paper shows how these films can be read in terms of an imagined audience based on immigration policies at the time. Overall, the paper argues that films from previous eras should not be read simply as objective representations of a social context, but in terms of an imaginary constitution which is virtually located within the real, and involving a range of rhetorical and aesthetic practices and modes of presentation.