Practicing Terra Firma: Extraction, Screen Production and Culture in Far West New South Wales

This thesis examines the Australian screen hub of Broken Hill, the filming location of popular movies such as Wake in Fright and Furiosa. It develops a method of screen analysis that accounts for the region’s environmental history; one that is heavily entangled in industrial resource extraction and agriculture. By following these histories, the thesis argues that geophysical spaces are commodified throughout screen practices in ways deeply tied to the material environments and colonial histories of place. It brings innovative new approaches in screen studies but also sheds light on a significant but under-acknowledged site of film history in Australia.