NFSA blog entries in Explore the collection

Discover the history of Southern Queensland through these films and songs from the NFSA collection.

Audiovisual Co-Assistant Kerry Yates explores the films and artefacts donated to the NFSA by the son of speargun pioneer Bill Heffernan.

The NFSA holds 795 items about one of our closest neighbours, Timor-Leste, so it’s only natural that we are developing a closer relationship with that country.

Television Curator Helen Tully solves the mystery behind Canberra’s Lady of the Lake 1973 beauty contest.

David Atfield, of the NFSA’s Collection Information section, discovers the fascinating movie-star wartime stories behind a series of photos in the NFSA collection.

Graham Shirley traces the history of the Cinema and Photographic Branch through the life of its first long-term cinematographer, Bert Ive.

Radio Archivist Chris Arneil on Tony Martin’s generous donation of 820 hours’ worth of contemporary radio history.

Graham Shirley shares his memories of Stanley Hawes ahead of this week’s Hawes retrospective at DocWeek in Adelaide.

See how Mildura has changed in these films and recorded sound items from the NFSA’s collection.

Project Coordinator Brendan Smith’s sneak peek ahead of the opening of The Art of Sound at the Grafton Regional Gallery.

Musings leading to Sympathy for the Devil, King Kong and more.

Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck died earlier this month at the age of 91. Sound archivist Graham McDonald recently found some Messages to Australia that were recorded by Brubeck for radio in 1962.

Graham Shirley’s tribute to Albie Thoms (28 Jul 1941 – 28 Nov 2012), filmmaker and advocate for an independent Australian cinema.

Simon Smith sheds light on The Australians in Toronto, a rare film of Sir Donald Bradman in action in Canada 80 years ago.

Luna Park Melbourne is 100 years old! Collection Access Officer Siobhan Dee explores a new film compilation to celebrate the iconic park’s birthday.

Film curators Jennifer Coombes and Tenille Hands recently accepted a collection of props and costumes from Fred Schepisi’s The Eye of the Storm (2011). How did they make their selection?

The recent Puberty Blues (2012) TV series reminds NFSA Television curator Frances Baldwin of watching the 1981 film version and receiving material from the film as an archivist in 1986.

See how Broken Hill has changed in these films and recorded sound items from the NFSA’s collection.

Catch some slices of life in Tasmania from the NFSA collection, spanning from 1903 to 2008.

These film fragments represent the earliest known surviving moving images of Tasmanian Australian Rules football action, filmed in 1911.

See the tropical beauty of Far North Queensland in these films from the NFSA collection, dating from 1899 to 2005.

As the world turns its attention to London, host city of the 2012 Olympic Games, Simon Smith explores an endearing travelogue of the city made 80 years earlier.

The NFSA and the Orange Historical Society will present a special screening of 1927 footage of the NSW town that captures a very different place to the city of today.

Sally Jackson talks about the NFSA exhibition on the life and work of a forgotten Australian star.

Simon Smith reports on a feature-length selection of silent films curated by the NFSA for the 2012 Sydney Film Festival.

In this month of May 2012, the NFSA joins in celebrating the 10th anniversary of the declaration of the Democratic Republic of Timor Leste.

It’s Western Australia’s time to shine as we look at a selection of films made about the sunny state from 1907-1972.

Get your own personal guided tour of filming and recording locations for classic Australian film, television, newsreels, music and radio, using 'near me’ on ASO mobile.

Beth Taylor on ’100 Miles (Emu Bay)’, a song about the history of Tasmania’s railway network, performed as part of the Cooee Cabaret in Burnie.

The National Film and Sound Archive is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin with a series of special film screenings.

The NFSA celebrates the inaugural World Radio Day on 13 February 2012 with a glimpse into the technical side of broadcasting during the Second World War in Australia.

Film curator Itzell Tazzyman introduces her role as collector of short films for the NFSA and highlights some recent international successes.

TV acquisitions curator Helen Tully looks at the current and past state of Australian-produced television drama.

NFSA Librarian Jan Thurling gives five stars to David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz, who are celebrating 25 years of critiquing films together.

The NFSA was presented with four awards at the 15th Annual Australian Society of Archivists Mander Jones Awards for excellence in archival writing or publishing. These awards honour Ms Phyllis Mander Jones MBE, a distinguished librarian, archivist and author.

Can you identify the bug that was glued between glass slides over 100 years ago?

The NFSA exhibitions team describe the challenges and joys of curating the Collective Passions poster exhibition.

NFSA research fellow Anthony Linden Jones is looking at the representation of Indigenous culture in Australian film music, particularly focusing on films made before 1960.

Artist Rosemary Mangiamele reflects on the revival of her late husband Giorgio Mangiamele’s films The Spag, Ninety Nine Per Cent and Clay.

Sigrid Thornton battled the ash cloud that grounded planes and closed airports to launch the NT Access Centre in Darwin.

'We Have Survived’ by No Fixed Address was added to the Sounds of Australia registry in 2008. This unofficial anthem for Indigenous people was recently celebrated at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne.

The NFSA has recently acquired a significant collection of 21 Australian feature films financed and produced by the former NSW Film and Television Office, including Careful, He Might Hear You (1983).

Latest additions to the Australian Mediatheque in Melbourne’s Federation Square include early AFL footage and films of the Murray River Region.

Sound Archivist Graham McDonald has compiled a selection of rare and beautiful record sleeve designs from Australia, USA, UK and the rest of the world.

Cooee Cabaret, the Sounds of Australia on the road theatre performance, has wrapped for 2011 after sell out shows in Coffs Harbour, Lismore, Boonah and Toowombah. One audience member tells us first hand how Cooee was enjoyed by people of all ages.

Beauty queens of days gone by are the stars of the show at the opening night, and 10th Anniversary, of Big Screen in Mildura.

In early 1940, with Australia less than a year into World War 2, a 17-year-old George Shirley used his father’s 16 mm movie camera to film two grand visitors to Sydney Harbour.

Visitors to the NFSA’s headquarters in Canberra will confront an intriguing element of recent Australian broadcasting history.

Bernie Carson is a 19 year old performer from Harrisville in regional Queensland with a magical voice and an infectious enthusiasm for life. She will be singing at the Cooee Cabaret when it rides into Boonah on March 1st.

Old school hip hop sampling techniques presenting even older school responsibility for the future we are creating.

All great summer playlists start with He’s My Blonde Headed Stompie Wompie Real Gone Surfer Boy and end with Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta’s Summer Nights.

Share the memories of your favourite summer tunes with us on our Facebook page and we will add them to our playlists.

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.

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.

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.

It’s the bicentennial year of independence in Argentina – a special year for celebration – and Australia will be the guest country at the 25th Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina from 13-21 November 2010.

Artists, performers and scholars are invited to be inspired by the NFSA’s collection – to excite their curiosity and to seek inspiration. The Scholars and Artists in Residence (SAR) Fellowship was set up in 2006, not only to help SAR fellows develop their ideas, but also to share knowledge with the broader community. In return, the NFSA acquires a copy of the SAR-inspired new work and any associated research that adds new information to the NFSA collection.

Having deposited most of my old audiovisual materials in the vaults of the NFSA, with more to come, I’m now spending time here in Canberra identifying the components of the collection and writing notes to put it all into perspective. These will eventually be available online.

September in Melbourne is Aussie Rules footy finals time! The city is abuzz and NFSA is screening footage of one of its most important sporting films in the heart of Melbourne at Federation Square, on the big screen, from  8 to 25 September.

The Cooee Cabaret is the NFSA’s new live show based on the Archive’s Sounds of Australia registry – a collection of iconic and culturally significant songs, sounds and recordings…like the Happy Little Vegemites and Aeroplane Jelly Song jingles, Along the Road to Gundagai and Waltzing Matilda.

Recently, NFSA staff, along with staff and students of the ANU School of Art, heard talented animator Katie Ryan reflect on her research into works in the NFSA collection. It was a fascinating insight into the history and technology of animation in Australia.

Well, Patineur Grotesque (Sestier, Australia 1896) has finally had its first screening to the Australian public. At 11.30am on 7 August 2010 in the ACMI 1 Cinema, around 120 people gathered to see and hear us as we presented Salon Lumière.  We, being myself as I gave a short introduction, Stephen Barker who narrated the whole thing, and John Shortis who played his light, airy and very French arrangements on the piano.  This is almost the same presentation we gave in the NFSA’s Arc cinema back in March when Patineur Grotesque was launched by the Hon Peter Garrett, Minister for environment and the arts to an invited audience.

The last couple of weeks have seen a flurry of activity to finalise selection of the 2010 additions to the National Registry of Recorded Sound – Sounds of Australia. We have had some really interesting and, at times very imaginative, nominations which have come in from all over the country.

Jenny Gall (Research Fellowships program at NFSA) and myself took the train across the English countryside to Cambridge University. Our destination was the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

A recent acquisition in the recorded sound section of NFSA included a curious copy of a Seekers LP from the late 1960s. Come the Day (Columbia SCXM.6093) reached number seven on the album charts in Australia, and included Georgy Girl, a number one hit, which stayed on the charts for 33 weeks in 1967.

The copy that arrived here is a Taiwanese release, on the First Record label, and definitely aroused our interest.

The Cooee Cabaret had its second outing on Friday night in Gunnedah. Whilst the audience was smaller in size than the turn out in Mildura, they looked like they had a great time.

We are putting together a small exhibition of reproductions from the illustrated song slide collection. Illustrated songs are glass magic lantern slides and were around in the first three decades of the 20th century. They featured photographic, painted or drawn images which were projected onto a screen in sequence to create a narrative. The slides accompanied a singer who invited the audience to join in during the chorus. These community singalongs took place in halls, theatres and cinemas and some were regularly broadcast on radio.

Last Friday night I attended the premiere of Cooee Cabaret in the Mercury Theatre in Mildura (north-west Victoria). The ABC regional radio station in Mildura publicised the performance, interviewing Brendan Smith and the cast, promoting the Sounds of Australia registry and encouraging residents in Mildura and surrounds to make their nominations.

A new, more interactive presentation of the Sounds of Australia collection is now available from australianscreen.

One of the main reasons we started the Sounds of Australia in 2007 was to find out what recordings people care about and why. This new website makes it easy for you to give us feedback – by adding a review or commenting about the sounds online. We would love to hear if you have information or personal reminiscences about the recordings in the collection.

The performers stalked about the rehearsal studio, flapping their arms and clucking like chooks. ‘They’re crazy, Dad!’ my daughter whispered to me, smiling like this was a good thing.

Nigel Ubrihien, creator of the NFSA’s new touring sounds show Cooee Cabaret, came face to face with one of the show’s inspirations when in Gunnedah recently… well, at least face to statue.

One of my favourite books here in the Library is Australian Etiquette, or the Rules and Usages of the Best Society in the Australasian Colonies, Together with Their Sports, Pastimes, Games, and Amusements (People’s Publishing Company, Melbourne, 1885. Facsimilie Edition by JM Dent, 1980).

Today, the release of Patineur Grotesque and the visit of Marius Sestier’s descendants, Mons. Robert Sestier and his sister, Mme Marie-Dominique Petitbois was celebrated with an event in the NFSA’s Arc cinema.