After teaching English at government high schools, in 1971, Freda Freiberg simultaneously embarked on studies in two new areas of scholarship: Japanese Studies and Film Studies. She was hired to teach film history and film criticism at pioneer centre of film studies in Victoria, Coburg Teachers College. At the same time, Freda Freiberg began to study Japanese language and culture at Melbourne University.

She went on to do post-graduate studies in Japanese language and culture in the Japanese Department at Monash University, writing a thesis on the representation of women in the films of classic Japanese film director, Kenji Mizoguchi (a specialist in women's melodramas).

Throughout the 1980s, she undertook extensive research on Japanese film history at the National Diet Library in Tokyo, Japanese film archives and libraries, the Pacific Film Archive in San Francisco, the Washington Archives, the Library of Congress and MOMA in New York and the British Film Institute.

Before cutbacks in funding, Freda Freiberg was a Lecturer in Asian Cinema (part-time) in the Visual Arts Department at Monash University. Later, she became an Associate of the Department. She was regularly employed as a specialist visiting lecturer on Japanese cinema at Monash, Melbourne and La Trobe universities in courses on World War II history, Japanese culture, film studies and cultural studies. She was invited to contribute a lecture on silent Japanese cinema for the AGNSW lecture series accompanying the blockbuster exhibition, Modern Boy Modern Girl.

From 1981, Freda Freiberg delivered numerous papers on Japanese film history and Japanese film criticism at Cinema Studies conferences, Japanese Studies conferences and Asian Studies conferences in Australia and the US. She was a member of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia, the Asian Studies Association of Australia and the Asian Cinema Studies Society. She was also a foundation member and co-ordinator of two academic Japanese Studies groups in Melbourne: (i) an informal network of Japanese Studies scholars, from different institutions, meeting monthly for paper presentations and discussion between 1988 and 2000; and (ii) the Japan-Australia Modernism Study Group, which met monthly on the campus of Melbourne University from 2000.  The first group was productive in generating panels for conferences and a goodly number of academic publications. The second brought together scholars from Australian studies and Japanese studies with a rich programme covering all the arts; and the papers were prepared for publication. She was a co-convenor of the group and co-editor of the publication. 

In addition to her academic publications, from 1975, Freda Freiberg published numerous articles, book reviews and film reviews in many different critical magazines and newspapers. For a period, she was the photography reviewer for The Age and she was a contributor to the Year 12 English Textbook, Insight, over a number of years. Freda Freiberg was also a contributor of academic articles and reviews to two well-respected website film journals with an international readership: Senses of Cinema and Screening the Past. She also wrote on Jewish History, especially WWII and in particular the Jews of Shanghai and the Mediterranean, and the Holocaust as represented in Film.

Freda Freiberg worked on the LIP Collective, the ground-breaking feminist arts journal published between 1976 and 1984; and she co-edited the book Don’t Shoot Darling, on Australian Women’s Film.

She was on the executive of the Australian Screen Studies Association, and faithfully retained the organisation’s minutes. They are now held in the Monash University Freda Freiberg Film and Screen Studies Library, named in her honour and housing many of her papers and books.

Throughout her life, Freda Freiberg was also a volunteer, involved in community organisations such as the Asian Students Host Family Scheme, Meals on Wheels, and U3A among others. She also served on numerous academic and arts-focussed boards and committees. When the Melbourne Film Festival was in trouble in 1983, Freda Freiberg was on the board that ensured it was to continue in 1984 as the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Curriculum Vitae

Freda Freiberg

Academic qualifications:

• B.A. (Melbourne): 1955
• Dip. Ed. (Melbourne): 1965
• Japanese major (Melbourne): 1971-3 (awarded H1)
• Post-Graduate Student in Japanese Language & Studies (Monash): 1975-6
• Honours thesis on the Representation of Women in films of Kenji Mizoguchi (Japanese Dept, Monash): 1977-8 (awarded H1)

Teaching experience:

• 1966-70: Senior secondary school teacher
• 1971-75: Teacher of film history and criticism at Coburg Teachers College (pioneer centre of film studies)
• 1982: Lecturer in Introduction to Japanese Film course at Swinburne Institute of Technology
• 1988-94: Lecturer in Visual Arts Department at Monash University. Co-ordinator, lecturer and tutor of Asian Cinema course, offered at 2^nd and 3^rd year undergraduate level, and to Graduate Diploma of Asian Studies students.
• 1986-2002: Visiting Specialist Lecturer on Japanese cinema at Monash, Melbourne, La Trobe and RMIT universities to undergraduate students of Japanese Culture, Asian Cinema, Japanese History, Film and Television Studies, Cultural Studies and Cinema Studies.
• 2001: Introduction to Japanese cinema: in-service course for senior high school teachers of Japanese: DEET initiative.
• May, 2002: Visiting Lecturer at Center for Japanese Studies, University of California at Berkeley

Major publications on Japanese film and culture:

• Women in Mizoguchi Films, monograph of the Japanese Studies Centre, Melbourne 1981
• `Occupied Feminism: The Rhetoric of Feminism in Japanese Films made under the American Occupation', in The first Australian history and film conference papers, Anne Hutton (ed), National Library and Australian Film & Television School, Canberra 1982.
• `The "difference" of Japanese film', in Papers and Forums on Independent Film and Asian Cinema, Australian Screen Studies Association and AFTS, Melbourne 1983. (Critical analysis of western literature on Japanese cinema)
• `The place of woman in the classical narrative text: the case of Sansho Dayu', in Not the whole story, Local Consumption Publications, 1984. (Structural and ideological analysis of a narrative deployed in three different media in three different eras: medieval Buddhist oral tale; Meiji-era literary novella; and post-WWII art movie.)
• `The transition to sound in Japan', in History of/and/in film, Tom O'Regan & Brian Shoesmith (eds), Perth, 1987.
• `Japan and the world 1931-1991: the Man-ei connection', in Japan and the World, Australia-Japan Research Centre, ANU, 1991. (On Japanese film production in Manchuria and wartime star, Ri Ko Ran, aka Shirley Yamaguchi)
• `Tales of Kageyama', in East-West Film Journal, Vol 6, No 1, Jan 1992. (On critical neglect of Occupation cinema)
• `Genre and Gender in World War II Japanese Feature Films', in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol 12, No 3, 1992.
• `China Nights (Japan, 1940): The Sustaining Romance of Japan at War', Chapter 2 in John C. Chambers & David Culbert (eds), World War II, Film and History, OUP, New York & Oxford, 1996.
• `Akira and the Postnuclear Sublime', Chapter 5 in Mick Broderick (ed), Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film, Kegan Paul International, London & New York, 1996.
• `Japanese Cinema': Chapter 23, Part 3, in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, edited by John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, OUP, Oxford & New York, 1998.