From innocent criminals to radical revolutionaries, feisty feminists to manly pioneers, egalitarian settlers to violent invaders, Caught on Screen shows how over successive generations the shape-shifting convict emerged on screen as a potent historical symbol.

Join us for a night of conversation and celebration as we launch James Findlay's new book: Caught on Screen, with our special guest, Professor Michelle Arrow.

Convicts loom large in Australian history. As transported criminals and the first European settlers, they have shackled the nation to a curious and contested origin story. Historians were largely silent on their exploits until the second half of the twentieth century, but before then a tradition of convict representation on screen appeared with the rise of cinema, taking hold of the popular imagination. From silent films to more recent television series, screen culture has elevated the convict experience to become a key historical narrative through which filmmakers and audiences have repeatedly reframed and challenged an understanding of Australia's colonial past. Caught on Screen traverses this history of convict representation for the first time.

Through detailed archival research into their production and reception, the book explores engaging case studies produced in Australia and internationally, including the work of Douglas Sirk, Alfred Hitchcock and Jennifer Kent. It illuminates the fact that the convict as historical symbol is one that intersected with, and helped to direct, major debates about nationalism, the legacies of colonisation, Aboriginal dispossession and the origins and character of Australian society.

James Findlay:

James Findlay is lecturer in the discipline of history where he teaches Australian history and researches historical film and television studies, convict history, Australian popular culture, and public history. He has held the Australian Film Institute Research Collection Fellowship and prior to his appointment was the Archival Project Manager for the Society of Australian Genealogists. Before becoming a historian, he worked extensively in film and television production, mostly in the field of documentary, for companies including Beyond Television, Screenworld, and Film Australia.

Michelle Arrow:

Michelle Arrow is professor in modern history at Macquarie University. She is the author of several books, including The Seventies: The Personal, the Political and the Making of Modern Australia (2019), which was awarded the 2020 Ernest Scott Prize for history, and the edited collection Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the Revolution (2023). She is currently working on a biography of the Australian writer and broadcaster Anne Deveson. Her most recent book is Personal Politics: Sexuality, Gender and the Remaking of Citizenship in Australia, co-authored with Leigh Boucher, Barbara Baird and Robert Reynolds (Monash University Publishing, 2024).

Contact the host of Book Launch: Caught on Screen: Australia’s Convict History in Film and Television