Hi

I’m Jane Freebury, writer

Arts journalist, and film critic

My byline first appeared in 1987 with a column in Australian Society, the former national affairs monthly, about Australian cinema and the local industry. During the 1990s, I lectured in cinema and media studies at tertiary institutions, including the University of Wollongong (1990-94). After a move to Indonesia for three years in the mid 1990s, I wrote on cinema for the English-language newspaper, The Jakarta Post.

I have been a regular freelancer on film for The Canberra Times since 1997, on a weekly basis. Over the last three decades, my articles have also been commissioned by Guardian Australia, Metro magazine, Metro Education, Anne Summers Reports, Cinema Papers, Filmnews, Media Information Australia, Australian-Canadian Studies and Black & White magazine, and The Australian (travel). In addition, I have produced and presented film reviews for community radio, ArtSound FM.

My reviews appear on Rotten Tomatoes, for which I am an individually approved critic. I am a member of both the Film Critics Circle of Australia (since 1990), and the Canberra Critics Circle.

Author

My book, Dancing to His Song: the Singular Cinema of Rolf de Heer, a detailed study of the oeuvre of the Australian auteur, was published by Currency Press and Currency House, Sydney, in 2015. Available in paper and ebook.

Reviewed as ‘both scholarly and reader-friendly. Rolf de Heer is ‘lucky to have found so eloquent a chronicler who, without gush and with critical rigour, so firmly fixes his achievement’ —  Inside Story . Its ‘achievement lies in part in how it explores ‘the contradictions in de Heer’s artistic identity’. The analysis is ‘often astute, teasing out how the complexity of de Heer’s audiovisual rhetoric belies the simplicity of his themes’ — Australian Book Review

Professional writer

During the decade 2002-2012, I worked in corporate communications as a speechwriter for Australian Government ministers covering portfolios in industry, innovation, small business, science, education, employment, tourism, resources and agriculture, fisheries and forestry.

© Jane Freebury     

Copyright applies to all my articles