NFSA Blog

In offering my congratulations to the Sydney: City of Film management committee for their successful bid, I would also like to reflect for a moment on why Sydney so richly deserves this honour.

We are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the earliest known surviving film of Test cricket in Australia with a new digital video master. The restored 1910 film is complete with the original orange-tinted intertitle and available for the first time at the correct film speed of 16-frames per second. It can be viewed on the NFSA YouTube channel and is likely to be seen in an upcoming edition of 7.30 Report about English cricketer Percy Fender’s home movies during the 1928-29 Ashes tour of Australia. Fender’s films capture what is believed to be the earliest known footage of cricket legend Donald Bradman.

Imagine a home movie of a landmark event filmed by someone who died many years ago. Or a wonderfully ornate glass slide, such as those featured in our song slides exhibition, where the illustrator cannot be identified. And the breakthrough recording of a well-known recording artist where, despite extensive research, no-one knows who actually made it.

It is the era of unbundled content. The middleman is being cut out of the negotiations and TVs are being sold with a broadband cable. Welcome TV 2.0. The Screen Producers Association of Australia conference presented an exciting yet highly competitive outlook for film and TV producers in Sydney last week.

Patricia Lovell AM, famous for producing Gallipoli (1981) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), will be awarded the NFSA’s highest accolade — the Ken G Hall Preservation Award — on Monday night. She is is being recognised for her tireless work in promoting the need for film preservation and advocating the establishment of the NFSA. Pat has kindly answered a Q&A giving us a personal insight into her career. A portrait can be found on australianscreen.

Broadcasting breaking news of the assassination of President John F Kennedy was a first for any Australian television network. The late Victorian broadcaster, journalist and author Michael Schildberger recognised early in his career the role that TV could play in reporting news and events as they unfolded, at a time when it took three to four days for the 16mm images of overseas events to arrive in Australia.

Shane Howard, of the classic Aussie band Goanna, will tonight perform one of the band’s biggest hits Solid Rock for the people of Warrnambool as part of Cooee Cabaret.

In a state memorial service today at the Sydney Opera House, over 2000 people celebrated the life and career of the Australian operatic legend. The Sydney-born singer, universally known as La Stupenda, was dubbed 'the voice of the 20th century’ by her longtime collaborator Luciano Pavarotti. Over her 40-year career she sang in 48 operas and recorded over 60 albums, many of which are in the NFSA collection.

The 2010 NFSA Ken G Hall Film Preservation Award is being presented to Patricia Lovell AM, on November 22, for her tireless work in promoting the need for preservation to film industry colleagues, politicians and the community at large. Patricia’s firm belief in the value and importance of the National Film and Sound Archive can be seen through this advocacy and by her continuing to deposit materials in the NFSA.

One of the first films ever recorded in Australia is currently screening 12 times a day in Federation Square in the lead-up to the 150th Melbourne Cup. Crowds are gathering in Melbourne’s cultural centre to watch the rare 1896 footage of Australia’s most loved horse race.