Dr. Tyson Wils
Research Profile:
I worked at the Australian Parliamentary Library, Parliament House, as a senior researcher in media, broadcasting, arts, and sports. As part of my role, I published budget reviews on the culture and recreation sector, and bills digests on media bills. I also produced specific research articles on media and broadcasting in the digital age, fake news, funding for public broadcasting and film production in Australia, and cybercrime.
I have also worked as a lecturer at local and international universities, specialising in the areas of media, screen and communication studies. I have published research on the filmmakers Werner Herzog, Terrence Malick, Dario Argento, Jesús 'Jess' Franco and James Wan. I have written on the areas of media convergence and storytelling, auteur theory, film realism, film festivals and spectatorship, performance and stardom (particularly in the context of film industry and economics), landscape and nature in cinema, dialectical materialism, and apocalypticism.
Current Research:
I currently work as a Senior Policy Officer at the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), specialising in communications infrastructure.
Employment Profile:
In addition to working as a lecturer in media, screen and communication studies, I have been employed as an academic language and learning skills advisor at the RMIT University library. I have also been a feature film programmer, curator and guest speaker at the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival, and presented public lectures at Channels: The Australian Video Art Festival, Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia, Melbourne Free University, and the Environmental Film Festival Australia. Other roles include working as a project manager to build a virtual resource centre at The David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research and working as a research assistant on the following projects (a) Communication Practices in the Victorian State Government (RMIT University) (b) Screen Literacy for Teachers and Students in Humanities and Social Sciences (La Trobe University) and (c) Images of Torture, Images of Terror: Post 9/11 and the Escalation of Screen Violence (La Trobe University)
I worked at the Australian Parliamentary Library, Parliament House, as a senior researcher in media, broadcasting, arts, and sports. As part of my role, I published budget reviews on the culture and recreation sector, and bills digests on media bills. I also produced specific research articles on media and broadcasting in the digital age, fake news, funding for public broadcasting and film production in Australia, and cybercrime.
I have also worked as a lecturer at local and international universities, specialising in the areas of media, screen and communication studies. I have published research on the filmmakers Werner Herzog, Terrence Malick, Dario Argento, Jesús 'Jess' Franco and James Wan. I have written on the areas of media convergence and storytelling, auteur theory, film realism, film festivals and spectatorship, performance and stardom (particularly in the context of film industry and economics), landscape and nature in cinema, dialectical materialism, and apocalypticism.
Current Research:
I currently work as a Senior Policy Officer at the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), specialising in communications infrastructure.
Employment Profile:
In addition to working as a lecturer in media, screen and communication studies, I have been employed as an academic language and learning skills advisor at the RMIT University library. I have also been a feature film programmer, curator and guest speaker at the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival, and presented public lectures at Channels: The Australian Video Art Festival, Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia, Melbourne Free University, and the Environmental Film Festival Australia. Other roles include working as a project manager to build a virtual resource centre at The David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research and working as a research assistant on the following projects (a) Communication Practices in the Victorian State Government (RMIT University) (b) Screen Literacy for Teachers and Students in Humanities and Social Sciences (La Trobe University) and (c) Images of Torture, Images of Terror: Post 9/11 and the Escalation of Screen Violence (La Trobe University)
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Peer-reviewed Academic Journal Articles by Dr. Tyson Wils
I draw on the concept of Umwelt (surrounding-world) which the German film historian Lotte H. Eisner uses to analyse films from the Weimar period. Particularly focusing on Lupu Pick's Kammerspielfilm Sylvester (1924), Eisner shows how images of the surrounding-world in the film are not directly part of the narrative yet, at the same time, symbolically function to enhance or enlarge what is occurring in the drama.
One of my aims in drawing on the concept of Umwelt is to respond to Lefebvre's claim that there are not always fixed boundaries between setting and landscape or between 'narrational' and 'spectacular' modes of spectatorship. In order to show how permeable the boundaries between narrativised space and autonomous spectacle can be, I tease out and develop one of the paradoxes that is implicit in Lefebvre's analysis of the desert terrain in Pier Paolo Pasonlini's Teorema (1968).
In the article I demonstrate that there are three different, interrelated modes of nature in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998). I suggest that these modes represent some of the different ways that human beings can be involved with nature and also the various ways human beings can know and experience nature. I further argue that this multifaceted presentation of nature is one way that Malick expresses a form of dialectical materialism in his work.
Chapters in Books by Dr. Tyson Wils
Klaus Kinski, Beast of Cinema - Critical Essays and Fellow Filmmaker Interviews. This book is to purchase here: http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-9897-0
Articles by Dr. Tyson Wils
Entries in Book Directories by Dr. Tyson Wils
I draw on the concept of Umwelt (surrounding-world) which the German film historian Lotte H. Eisner uses to analyse films from the Weimar period. Particularly focusing on Lupu Pick's Kammerspielfilm Sylvester (1924), Eisner shows how images of the surrounding-world in the film are not directly part of the narrative yet, at the same time, symbolically function to enhance or enlarge what is occurring in the drama.
One of my aims in drawing on the concept of Umwelt is to respond to Lefebvre's claim that there are not always fixed boundaries between setting and landscape or between 'narrational' and 'spectacular' modes of spectatorship. In order to show how permeable the boundaries between narrativised space and autonomous spectacle can be, I tease out and develop one of the paradoxes that is implicit in Lefebvre's analysis of the desert terrain in Pier Paolo Pasonlini's Teorema (1968).
In the article I demonstrate that there are three different, interrelated modes of nature in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998). I suggest that these modes represent some of the different ways that human beings can be involved with nature and also the various ways human beings can know and experience nature. I further argue that this multifaceted presentation of nature is one way that Malick expresses a form of dialectical materialism in his work.
Klaus Kinski, Beast of Cinema - Critical Essays and Fellow Filmmaker Interviews. This book is to purchase here: http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-9897-0
Please also join us afterwards in celebrating the launch of:
Activist Film Festivals: Towards a Political Subject (Intellect, 2017)
Edited by Tyson Wils & Sonia Tascón
To be launched by Dr Fincina Hopgood (University of New England)
Activist Film Festivals: Towards a Political Subject breaks new ground by bringing scholars from a range of disciplines together with industry professionals to explore festivals as activist spaces. Tracing the growth of activist and human rights-focused film festivals from the 1970s to the present, and using case studies from San Francisco, Brazil, Bristol, Melbourne and elsewhere, this book explores what it might mean to produce a politically engaged spectator and how effective festivals are at doing this. The authors in this edited collection contribute vital critical insights into how humanitarianism and “suffering of the other” can problematically frame the way (Western) spectators experience and come to understand the realities of those they see on screen.
On the one hand, these films suggest that degeneration is built into the evolution of the human species and that there is a course toward environmental catastrophe that cannot be avoided. Time in these films is presented as being in a paradoxical stasis where the end is inscribed in the beginning and vice versa. On the other hand, these films counter such pessimism by employing various ironic devices that can result in spectators’ experiencing a self-reflexive, aesthetic distance from what they see and hear. This distance can enlighten audience’s to the nature of their relationships to the external world and the need for them to own and take responsibility for the inner meaning and emotion they ascribe to phenomena. I will argue that this evokes a sense of Albert Camus’ notion of absurd freedom.
One theme of this paper is that debates about funding the ABC from government appropriations can be traced back at least to the late 1940s when the Corporation was first directly funded from Consolidated Revenue. One aspect of this debate is whether dependence on government funding causes confusion about ABC’s independence from government, or even tension with the government of the day.
Another theme is that there has been ongoing discussion about the effectiveness of the ABC Charter as a mechanism for measuring how well the ABC uses its funds
Some key issues for the new Parliament include: the rise of global competitors into the Australian screen and media industry and the impact of this on competition; the state of quality journalism in Australia as trends towards the consumption of online news increases; and whether funding incentives and other support mechanisms for the screen sector are responsive to the current transformations occurring in the industry.
Cat Barker, Monica Biddington, Nicole Brangwin, Helen Portillo-Castro and Tyson Wils
This Quick Guide provides some brief background information on national measures to build cybersecurity and cybersafety and combat cybercrime, and includes links to relevant websites.
It has been prepared by the following members of the Parliamentary Library’s Social Policy section: Dr Tyson Wils, Dr Luke Buckmaster and Dr Shaun Crowe.
Bills Digests provide an independent perspective on legislation. They are written to assist members of Parliament in their consideration of Bills
This article explains what the Location Incentive Funding Program is and also summaries some of the policy discussion about film tax incentives in Australia.