Film-focused exhibition coming to Sydney
“Film footage about war makes it real and emotive, and it connects and places people into another world – a place that hopefully most of us never have to be.”
The Australian War Memorial’s (AWM) free touring exhibition Action! Film and War will be in the State Library of NSW from October 7 to April 28.
The exhibition’s lead curator, Daniel Eisenberg (pictured), said the exhibition features 250 carefully chosen items from the AWM’s vast photo, film and sound collection – ranging from camera equipment and audio-visual clips, to the diaries of war cinematographers – to explore how film shapes our understanding of the Australian experience of war.
Adding layers of depth in that exploration is including what Eisenberg calls “the struggle of the medium [of film] – forever caught between telling a good story, and telling the truth”.
“And the first sparks in that struggle [in the Australian context] were present in the First World War imagery.”
The exhibition also sheds light on the people who captured war footage on camera and film – often risking their lives to do so – and the changing technology and evolving production methods used through time.
“A still image captures a moment, but what a moving image does is different – it can transport you,” Eisenberg said.
“Film footage about war makes it real and emotive, and it connects and places people into another world – a place that hopefully most of us never have to be.”
Among the featured figures in the exhibition is Captain Frank Hurley, who in the Great War was sent to film and photograph Diggers in battles initially in France and Belgium, before being sent to the Middle East, where he witnessed the Australian Light Horse in the Battle of Jericho.
Australia’s first Oscar-winning film was actually a war one, called Kokoda Front Line! – which won Best Documentary in 1943, and was shot almost exclusively by Damien Parer, who tragically was killed towards the end of World War II by Japanese fire, while filming in Palau.
The Academy Award trophy for Kokoda Front Line! is on display in the exhibition, as is a work diary that belonged to Neil Davis, who extensively covered Australians fighting in the Vietnam War, the camera Paul Moran used on the day he was killed by a car bomb in 2003 during the Iraq War, and items and works by the Australian Defence Forces’s first female war cinematographer, Robyn White.
A range of camera equipment – from a 15kg wooden hand-wound camera, to a modern helmet-attached Go Pro device – will be on display too, plus a feature film section, where visitors can view the original script for Peter Weir’s Gallipoli, and costumes from Jirga and The Sapphires.
For more information about the exhibition, visit awm.gov.au/action-film-and-war
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