Starting this week, Julie Rigg is broadcasting excerpts from the AFTRS Screen Culture Event where we asked: which five films would you choose to explain cinema to an Alien? My special thanks to Alana Adye and Rachel Fiddes for their input into this event, and to the screen studies team Mike Jones and Matt Campora. Julie Rigg’s five are first and she does a beautiful job of explaining why she chose what she chose. you can download the podcast here:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/movietime/five-films-for-an-alien/3768110

And her blog comments are here:

Which five films would you screen to an alien?

Always supposing, that is, you met an alien who wanted to know about the history of cinema here on earth.

This was the challenge Karen Pearlman, head of Screen Studies at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School set for a panel of film critics and lecturers late last year.

The occasion was the launch of the School’s new screen culture course:  and for the alien, we could she suggested, substitute scene studies student.

I was a panellist along with Kristy Matheson from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Neil Peplow, head of screen content at the school and Giles Hardie, Entertainment Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald online.

We can only play you a short extract from the proceedings today. I’ll be looking for opportunities to play more later in the year. And I’ve decided to broadcast in the order in which we spoke. Which means, me first. And, I found, I became rather caught up in the issue of what the alien understood. What sort of close encounter were we describing here?

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