'And the villain still pursued her'. Origins of film in Australia; 1896 - 1913.

Abstract

Excerpt from Introduction: This thesis sets out to answer the question; how did Film develop in Australia before World War One? Film came to Australia in a magician's bag of tricks; it stayed to become big business, and in the process it transformed the life of Australians. From magician's art to industrial organization is thus the scope of this history and it encompasses the dilemma facing any film historian; for film has the dual characteristics of being at the same time an art form and an industry. It is the main thesis of this study that already before World War One, Australia had experienced nearly all the functions of twentieth century Film as an art form, and that the small-scale industry that emerged by 1913 owed its peculiarities to the first two decades of Film's existence in Australia. The origins of Film in Australia are dealt with in Chapter One. This chapter also describes the impact this novel form of entertainment made on Australian audiences and how it immediately captured their imagination. I have found that foreigners and not Australians played the leading roles in the early development of Film in this country. The first films were English brought to Australia by an American magician. A Frenchman made the first film of The Melbourne Cup (1896), and two Englishmen developed Australian religious propaganda films by 1900. It was also foreigners like T.J. west, Cozens Spencer and J. D. Williams who built the first permanent cinemas and established the economic base of the industry. Nevertheless, it will be argued in later chapters that despite this early dominance of the local industry by foreigners, and of Australian screens by foreign films, within two decades, Australians had taken over the local industry and some films were beginning to express a peculiarly Australian idiom.