LAUSR

the 1970s, for example, supports the established claim that feminist filmmaking cannot be separated from the discourses of women’s liberation most visible in urban centres like Sydney and Melbourne.Womenwho had gained filmmaking experience through government projects in the late 1950s and 1960s brought their skills to bear on the feminist aspirations of the 1970s. New filmmaking cooperatives also trained scores of women in the work of cinema, and a range of conferences and festivals provided women with new outlets for thinking and connecting through cinema. Tomsic tends to focus on organisations and individuals throughout Beyond the Silver Screen, consistently returning to questions about how the construction of ‘gender’ operated at key moments in Australian film history. Readers who want to know more about matters of representation and form will have to follow up on Tomsic’s brief mention of key films. Where the book shines, however, is in the consistent attention to ‘the paradoxes of women’s presence as filmmakers and participants in film culture’ (236). Overall, Tomsic’s even-handed approach reframes ‘the boundaries set for historical inquiries into Australian cultural history’, opening new avenues of inquiry for global scholars of women’s film history.