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?

The profession of film director can and should be such a high and precious one; that no man aspiring to it can disregard any knowledge that will make him a better film director or human being.
Sergei Eisenstein

- Or this might just as well apply to a festival director, curator, programmer, creative producer, critic, dramaturge, commentator…any of whom might want to expand their knowledge by joining the 2012 AFTRS Graduate Certificate in Screen Culture.

One day left, click HERE to apply!

“All you need is a girl and a gun” Jean-Luc Goddard

“All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.” Charlie Chaplin

Five days left to apply for the AFTRS 2012 Graduate Certificate in Screen Culture click here to get the forms!

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it’s considered to be your style.
Fred Astaire