AUSTRALIAN CINEMAS GOLDEN SUMMERS – NATIONAL FILM AND SOUND ARCHIVE
All films in this series are unclassified 18+
Saturday 23 February 8.30pm - INFERNO
Dir: Giuseppe De Liguoro, Italy, 68 mins (total running time 94 mins), 35/16mm, (unclassified 18+)
The first Italian multi-reel ‘feature’, Inferno is a phantasmal envisioning of the words of Dante’s The Divine
Comedy that still resonates with digital-era filmmakers, composers, animators and games designers. Preceded
by Nero: or the Fall of Rome (Italy, 1909, 14 mins) and new restoration of George Melies’ famous space travel
fantasy, A Trip to the Moon (France 1902, 12 mins). Screening outdoors in the NFSA courtyard with live
accompaniment by Luke Sweeting and his trio. Inferno courtesy Cineteca di Bologna. A Trip to the Moon
restored by Lobster Films, Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema and Technicolor Foundation for Cinema
Heritage.
Thursday 28 February 7.30pm - INGEBORG HOLM
Dir: Victor Sjöström, Sweden, 1913, 90 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+).
Legendary Swedish actor/director Victor Sjöström’s first masterpiece of social realism; a powerful, then
controversial and ultimately public opinion-changing drama of a shopkeeper’s widow trying to keep her
business, her family and her wits together. Live accompaniment by Mauro Colombis. Courtesy of Svenska
Filminstitutet Filmarkivet.
Friday 1 March 7.30pm - ATLANTIS
Dir: August Blom, Denmark, 1913, 116 mins, DCP, (unclassified 18+)
Brilliant but damaged young scientist von Kammacher (Olaf Fønss) becomes erotically obsessed with dancer
Ingigerd, eventually following her on board a doomed trans-Atlantic luxury liner. Adapted from Nobel Prizewinner Gerhart Hauptmann’s novel, Atlantis is renowned for its centrepiece recreation of a very Titanic-like
shipping disaster. Live accompaniment by Mauro Colombis. Courtesy Det Danske Filminstitut Filmarkivet.
Saturday 2 March 2pm - SANTARELLINA AND FATHER
Total running time 85 mins approx., 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Something very different and more intimate from early Italian cinema. Santarellina (Dir: Marco Casarini, Italy,
1912, 42 mins) is a delicate romantic comedy starring Italian cinema’s Mary Pickford, ‘Gigetta’ Morano. Father
(Dir: Giovanni Pastrone, Italy, 1912, 43 mins) is a powerful, Les miserables-style story of bitter business rivals
featuring then Italian stage superstar Ermete Zacconi. Live accompaniment by Mauro Colombis. Santarellina
from Eye Institute, The Netherlands’ Lobster Films collection; Father from Eye Institute’s Desmet Collection.
Saturday 2 March 4.30pm - AUSTRALIAN CINEMA’S GOLDEN SUMMER: PROGRAM ONE
Total running time approx. 120 mins, 35mm/16mm/digital, (E)
Three pioneering Australian film historians – Ina Bertrand, Andrew Pike and the NFSA’s Graham Shirley –join us
for a first showcase of some of the few precious reels of films that have survived (and some of what’s been
lost) from the approximately 100 features films made in Australia to 1913. Live accompaniment by Joshua
McHugh.
Saturday 2 March, 8.30pm - QUO VADIS
Dir: Enrico Guazzoni, Italy, 1913, 94 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
With Appian Way mountain-side locations, crowd scenes of 5000, man-eating lions and chariot races where
nothing was faked, this was the first of many film adaptation of Sienkiewicz’s best-selling novel of Christian
faith in ancient Rome – and a high point of Italian silent epic cinema. Screening in the NFSA courtyard, with live
accompaniment by Mauro Colombis. Courtesy Fondazione Cineteca Italiana.
Sunday 3 March 2pm - AUSTRALIAN CINEMA’S GOLDEN SUMMER PROGRAM TWO
Total running time approx. 120 mins, 35mm/16mm/digital, (E)
Including surviving reels from Raymond Longford’s oldest surviving film, 1911’s The Romantic Story of
Margaret Catchpole, a second program showcases the few precious reels of films that have survived (and
some of what’s been lost) from the approximately 100 features films made in Australia to 1913. Live
accompaniment by Joshua McHugh.
Sunday 3 March 4.30pm - ZIGOMAR VERSUS NICK CARTER AND FANTOMAS – IN THE SHADOW OF THE
GUILLOTINE.
Total running time 103 mins approx., 35mm/digital, (unclassified 18+)
In the early 1910s French movie audiences went in droves to see racy face-offs between international criminal
men of mystery and their super-sleuth police opponents. Here are two of the greatest: Zigomar versus Nick
Carter (France, 1911, 53 mins, 35mm); plus Fantômas – In the Shadow of the Guillotine. (Dir: Louis Feuillade,
France, 1913, 50 mins, digital). Live percussion accompaniment by Gary France, Miroslav Bukovsky and Carl
Dewhurst. Zigomar courtesy Eye Institute, The Netherlands. Fantômas courtesy Gaumont-Pathe Archives.
Tuesday 5 March 7pm - D W GRIFFITH AND THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN MOVIE
Total running time 100 mins approx., 35mm/16mm, (unclassified 18+)
The best way to understand how American cinema learnt how to tell movie stories is by watching the ground
breaking pre-Hollywood short films director D W Griffith made from 1908 until his great Birth of a Nation in
1915. A selection of these milestones includes A Corner in Wheat (1909, 15 mins) and The Unseen Enemy
(1912, 17 mins) – many the first roles for stars like Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish and Lionel Barrymore. Live
musical accompaniment. From the NFSA collection.
Thursday 6 March 7pm - THE MYSTERIOUS X
Dir: Benjamin Christiansen, Denmark, 1914, 86 mins, DCP, (unclassified 18+)
Rather than expose his wife to scandal, a naval officer allows himself to be condemned as a traitor – little
realising her lover is the real spy. Denmark’s Benjamin Christiansen wrote, directed and starred in a stunning
first film masterpiece of astonishing close-ups and film noir-like lighting effects. Live accompaniment by Elaine
Loebenstein. Courtesy Det Danske Filminstitut Filmarkivet.
Wednesday 7 March 7pm - THE ABYSS AND THE GREAT CIRCUS CATASTROPHE
Total running time 81 mins approx., 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
We celebrate the international allure and mystique of Danish cinema’s first superstars. Cinema’s first ‘femme
fatale’, Astrid Nielsen cracks a big whip in the erotic melodrama The Abyss (Denmark, 1910, 38 mins). Then The
Great Circus Catastrophe (Dir: Eduard Schnedler-Sørensen, Denmark, 1912, 43 mins) showcases the seductions
and stunts of ‘brooding’ hero, Valdemar Psilander. Live accompaniment by Elaine Loebenstein. Courtesy Det
Danske Filminstitut Filmarkivet.
Friday 8 March 7pm - WHITE SLAVERY MOVIES
Total running time 137 mins approx., 35mm/16mm, (unclassified 18+)
The first ‘exploitation’ films, White Slavery movies fascinatingly remain us of how the first feature films found
their audiences by reflecting popular social anxieties as much as popular taste. Two of most controversial were
A Victim of the Mormons (Dir: August Blom, Denmark, 1912, 50 mins, 35mm) and Traffic in Souls (Dir: George
Loane Tucker, USA, 1913, 87 mins). Live musical accompaniment. Traffic in Souls courtesy the British Film
Institute. A Victim of the Mormons courtesy Det Danske Filminstitut Filmarkivet.
Saturday 9 March 2pm - AUSTRALIAN CINEMA’S GOLDEN SUMMER
Total running time, 90 mins approx., (E)
A reprise screening of some of the few precious reels of films that have survived (and some of what’s been
lost) from the approximately 100 features films made in Australia to 1913. Live accompaniment by Joshua
McHugh.
Saturday 9 March 4.30pm - GERMINAL
Dir: Albert Capellini. France, 1913, 147 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
With the recent rediscovery of many of his films, Albert Capellini is now gaining the status of French cinema’s
th
first master, ‘auteur’ director. Adapting Zola’s novel of hard times in the small coal mining towns of late 19
century France, Capellini’s Germinal is considered by many to be the greatest French feature up until 1913.
Live accompaniment by Elaine Loebenstein. Courtesy La Cinémathèque Française.
The below two sessions are free / low admission. Tickets can be purchased directly from the National Film
and Sound Archive.
Thursday 28 February 2pm
AUSTRALIA’S GOLDEN SUMMER: MOVIES OF THE TIMES
Total running time 80 minutes approx., 16/35mm/digital, (E)
We give our program a social context – and put a face to the movie-going audiences of the day – with a
selection of pre-1913 Australian newsreels, ‘actualities’ and cinema advertisements from the NFSA collection.
Selected titles from this program will be repeated prior to other feature sessions.
Admission just $5. Live accompaniment by Mauro Colombis. Includes titles from the NFSA’s Film Australia
and Corrick Collections.
Friday 1 March 6pm
SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS: OUR FIRST FEATURE?
Total running time 40 mins approx.
For decades, the Salvation Army’s 1900 Soldiers of the Cross was legendary as Australia’s – and perhaps the
world’s – first feature film. Film historians now understand that it was rather something very different. ANU
School of Art’s Dr. Martyn Jolly looks beyond the legend to what Soldiers of the Cross was: as popular media
and work of art.
FREE session, bookings advised.