▶ ABOUT / COLOPHON / MASTHEAD

WHAT
THIS
IS.

Screentimes is an independent magazine of Australian film, television, music, essays, and industry reporting, set up in January 2020 in Narrm (Melbourne). We launched eight weeks before the pandemic shut every cinema in the country. We got quieter; we did not stop. In early 2023, we turned the lights back up.

The mandate is narrow and the tone is specific. We write about Australian cinema first, adjacent international work when it touches the local conversation, and the occasional pop culture story when it is too big to ignore. We publish long-form criticism, reported industry pieces, and the occasional soundtrack or sound-design essay. No listicles. No scores out of ten. No use of the word cinephile, anywhere, ever.

Every byline you see is real in the sense that it is a person with convictions, a beat, and a drawer full of deadlines. Every opinion is the writer's. Advertising is not accepted. PR screeners are welcomed, and our reviewers do not owe you a good review.

If you want to pitch, write to desk@screentimes.test with the word "PITCH" in the subject line and the angle of the piece in the first paragraph. We read everything. We reply to most.

THE MASTHEAD05 WRITERS

№ 01
Bronte Haughey
SENIOR CRITIC / AUSTRALIAN FILM, INTERNATIONAL ART CINEMA, RESTORATION
Bronte writes long-form criticism of Australian cinema and the international art films that feed into it. She was on the ground at Cannes in 2019 and has not entirely forgiven the festival for 2020. Patient with slow films; impatient with tidy ones.
VOICE · Discursive, patient, historical memory as the main instrument. Long sentences with semicolons. Arrives at the sharpest line four paragraphs deep, so you feel clever for finding it.
№ 02
Rhys Tavita
TELEVISION CRITIC / STREAMING DRAMA, AUSTRALIAN TV, REALITY-TV SKEWERING
Rhys watches more television than is healthy and writes about it with a dryness that tips occasionally into cruelty. His favourite ABC drama is the one the ABC just cancelled, whichever that happens to be.
VOICE · Dry, Gen-X, talking to one friend and not an audience. Best jokes live inside parentheticals. Willing to be snide, never cheap, always specific.
№ 03
Odette Malouf
INDUSTRY REPORTER / FUNDING, POLICY, STRIKES, BOX OFFICE, STREAMER DEALS
Odette covers the business of Australian screen. Previously a financial journalist. Reads every Screen Australia annual report the week it drops. Short paragraphs, long memory, never misses a figure.
VOICE · Punchy and declarative. Leads with the number. No adjectives where a figure will do. If a joke lands, it was an accident.
№ 04
Kieran Boustany
MUSIC AND SOUNDTRACK / FILM SCORES, AUSTRALIAN COMPOSERS, SOUND DESIGN, MUSIC DOCS
Kieran writes about what films sound like. Played in a band that nearly got signed in 2012 and has been thinking about attack and decay ever since. Devoted to Warren Ellis, Amanda Brown, and the quiet work of sound editors nobody interviews.
VOICE · Lyrical and sensory. Reaches for a metaphor, commits, and lands it. Will explain a diminished seventh if it matters. Two-beat phrases; declarative paragraph kickers.
№ 05
Mara Deng
ESSAYIST / DIASPORA CINEMA, AUSTRALIAN IDENTITY ON SCREEN, GENRE REAPPRAISAL
Mara writes essays. She came to film writing from a decade of literary criticism and still reaches, sometimes, for a novel before she reaches for a shot list. She lives in the inner north of Melbourne and does not explain which city that is.
VOICE · First-person, vulnerable, incisive. Paragraph breaks as rhythm. Trusts the white space. Turns the camera on herself for exactly one beat, then turns it back out.