The unrepresentable and the sublime: theorising the dense absences of First Nations Australian Filmmaking

This thesis examines the theoretical density and philosophical engagements of First Nations Australian filmmaking. It focuses on the distinctive absences in films directed by Tracey Moffatt and Warwick Thornton, including Moffatt?s Night Cries (1990) and Thornton?s Sweet Country (2017). It examines these films? theoretical and material engagements with the philosophy of aesthetics, in particular the sublime, as conceptualised by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, respectively. The thesis argues that these filmmakers deconstruct the sublime and renovate new possibilities from the unrepresentable, that which exceeds the visible. It makes an important scholarly contribution to the theoretical examination of Indigenous Australian filmmaking