Skip to main content

A VISIT TO THE ARCHIVES -secrets and treasures.

Today I paid my first visit to the Archives of South Australia.  If you are interested, I am researching picture theatres of South Australia as part of another blog I have  - History of South Australian Picture Theatres – History, South Australia, Picture Theatres (wordpress.com).  I love this blog I have been adding to it slowly and yes I admit, at times very slowly, over some years.  

Most of my research has been through Trove, some books that I own copies of, and the odd interviews that I have done. Also, as I am a member of  CATHS (Cinema and Theatre Historical Society), I can access their archives too - which is incredibly helpful - if you are interested at all in Cinema and the preservation of the history of cinema I highly recommend you join.  

Anyway, today I visited the State Records of South Australia and was able to look at some records which are held there.  What I find really fascinating is that by looking at records you can bring to life the story behind these buildings/businesses. For instance, just by reading a few letters and looking at official records of the period I was able to get an understanding of just how tough it was during the late 1920s and early 1930s for the Picture Theatre industry.  And further I was able to look at different records for different theatres and see that some were doing it tougher than others.  So behind that information is the knowledge that certain suburbs were struggling more than others. The working class in this instance were doing it tougher than the white-collar or the professional classes in Adelaide. And you can glean that knowledge simply by looking at whether certain cinemas were struggling to pay the yearly fees on time, whilst others seemed to do so easily. 

Entertainment is a luxury for many households.  In the early 20th century Picture Theatre houses were a chief source of entertainment for every household, that was before television, which arrived in Adelaide in 1959 and in other parts of South Australia in the 1960s. So if you are doing it tough and as many households are doing so today it is the luxuries that you cut first.  So it makes sense that those doing it toughest and that typically is the working classes - that they make the cuts deeper and earlier.  

When I was a uni I wanted to write an essay about the impact of The Great Depression on the Picture Theatre Industry in Australia, but decided against it as it needed more than 3000 words to do it justice. But today I was able to see firsthand the impact that it did have - at least for one cinema.

Archives are such wonderful places.  I cannot wait to go back and discover more secrets and treasures. 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Cinema of Attractions.

 There is a period in film history sandwiched between the Lumiere Brothers and the beginning of the studio era that the film theorist Tom Gunning calls an era of the ‘cinema of attractions’.  This is a theory used to describe films that are not narrative driven, but rather are driven by the need to amaze, a need to exhibit, a need to acknowledge their audience. This essay will examine the technology behind film, the desideratum for these films to exhibit, as well as the cultural context of film during this period and it will consider the theory behind ‘cinema of attractions’. In the mid-eighteenth century shadow theatre had arrived in Europe and was at once very popular with audiences (Robinson 1981, p. 2). Magic lanterns go back to the seventeenth century when exhibitors would tour cities and towns (Robinson 1981, p. 9).  Whilst invention after invention came and went, it could be argued that it was the invention of photography in 1826 that is the true basis of film as w...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Humanist Man and The Great Beauty (2013) Dir. Paolo Sorrentino

The humanist man is a construct that divides human and non-human. It is the conviction that humans exist ‘either outside of nature or above it’ (Gilebbi, 2019 p. 357).  Gilebbi suggests that The Great Beauty (2013) is an allegory of the crisis of the Humanist Man by implying that Jep is searching for a posthumanist subjectivity (2019, p. 356).  Jep is searching for his place in the world that surrounds him. He is distanced from the ecosphere, this is shown by placing Jep up high above the city at the party, at his house, etc. And when he walks through the city he watches as others such as the nun who is collecting the oranges, appear to become one with her environment, as she almost vanishes into the tree. About 1 hour and 35 minutes into the film Jep asks Arturo to ‘make me vanish too’ and Arturo replies, ‘it’s just a trick’. The giraffe scene harks back to the zoetrope, an optical toy of the late 19th century, and a precursor to film and film cameras. The zoetrope gave the ...
Post a Comment
Read more