Cinematic landscapes, dark tourism and the ghosts of Port Arthur

Bibliographic Data

ID12650599
AuthorsJames Findlay (0000-0003-4117-881X, The University of Sydney, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume16
Issue4
Pages678-694
Publication date2019-10-02
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory Australia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1449-0854 • E-ISSN: 1833-4881
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14490854.2019.1670072
OpenAlexW2988939643
LanguageEN
Citations received4

Since its closure in the late nineteenth century, Port Arthur has emerged as one of Australia’s most important heritage sites. This article considers cinema’s role in its evolution from former penal settlement to popular travel destination by exploring a series of travelogue films produced between the 1930s and 1950s. These films were unique for Tasmanian tourism promotion of the period because they encouraged visitors to actively remember the site’s convict past. Furthermore, their representations of the convict experience drew on audiences’ prior knowledge of Port Arthur’s role as a major film location in earlier silent features, helping to characterise it as a site of dark tourism and informing visitors’ experiences and expectations on the ground. Ultimately these telling screen encounters illustrate how cinema prompted Australians to confront contentious convict histories with regard to their role in tourism, identity and place. This article was the winner of the 2017 Jill Roe Prize awarded by the Australian Historical Association for the best unpublished article-length work of historical research in any area of historical enquiry produced by a postgraduate student

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Convict · Criminology · Dark tourism · Identity (music · Media studies · Movie theater · Port (circuit theory · Settlement (finance · Sociology · Tourism · Engineering · History · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Travel Writing and Literature

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