摘要：A series of films commissioned by the Queensland government in 1898 were made,showing a variety of scenes of metropolitan Brisbane and rural regions ofQueensland. This paper examines some of these films in terms of the way theyconstitute a 'colonial imaginary' involving the positioning of the spectator in time andspace. By drawing on Metz's ideas of the cinema apparatus, as well as Foucault'sarguments concerning the surveillance of space, the paper shows how these filmscan be read in terms of an imagined audience based on immigration policies at thetime. Overall, the paper argues that films from previous eras should not be readsimply as objective representations of a social context, but in terms of an imaginaryconstitution which is virtually located within the real, and involving a range ofrhetorical and aesthetic practices and modes of presentation
