Caught on Screen: Australia's Convict History in Film and Television

From innocent criminals to radical revolutionaries, feisty feminists to manly pioneers, egalitarian settlers to violent invaders, Caught on Screen shows how over successive generations the shape-shifting convict emerged on screen as a potent historical symbol.

Convicts loom large in Australian history. As transported criminals and the first European settlers, they have shackled the nation to a curious and contested origin story. Historians were largely silent on their exploits until the sec...