Thirroul & the National Film Archivery 2136 AD - a science fiction
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| Garry Shead, Thirroul. |
During the presentation of the annual Rod Wallace Memorial Lecture at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), Canberra, on Thursday, 14 November 2024 by the ever colourful and lively Professor Deb Verhoeven, formerly of Melbourne and of the NFSA Board, but at the time attached to the University of Alberta, Canada, an interesting science-fiction article from The Sun, Sydney, newspaper of 2 April 1916 was noted. It predicted the creation of a future Australian film and sound archive, with a focus on the preservation and promotion of documentary footage - referred to as actualities - recording significant events in the life of Australia. This would eventually come to pass in 1984 with the creation of the NFSA, supported in part by the previously formed National Archives of Australia, which had a focus on government records in general. Along the way the writer of the article - Adam M'Cay - referenced the New South Wales coastal town of Thirroul, which just happened to be located next door to the present writer's home town of Bulli (Organ 2013). Thirroul is perhaps most famous for the visit there during the early 1920s of English writer D.H. Lawrence, and his drafting of the novel Kangaroo there in a local bungalow named Wyewurk (Davis 1989). M'Cay's forward projecting, speculative article came before all that. It is reproduced below in full. Uncannily, a lot of what M'Cay theorised more than a century ago has, as of 2024, come to pass.
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HISTORY OF THE FILM SCREENINGS OF 2316 A.D.
(By Adam M'Cay)
This article is written to convey the proposition: Should not films of conspicuous historical value like these be permanently preserved by Government in a Public Library, or rather Public Repository [i.e., Archive] to be overhauled at sufficiently frequent intervals, in order that future generations may be eye-witnesses of the events which are happening in the world to-day?
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PUBLIC REPOSITORIES
Every State with a pretence to civilisation has its public library - a repository of books. This is, of course, the most important of all human archives. It preserves thought, which is the most valuable possession the world enjoys. Ancient libraries have preserved for us the fables of Aesop, which everyone reads, and the poems of Homer, read avidly by the boys at Mr. Stacy Waddy's school. Modern libraries will preserve for our descendants the writings of Bernard Shaw and Charles Garvice and Henry Lawson and William Butters. Even though the Germans have 17 inch howitzers, there are so many great libraries in the world that the culture contained in books cannot be entirely destroyed. Civilised nations also have their art galleries, and these are next in value to the libraries. Films, like those mentioned above, with many others which have come and gone, are things much more worth saving than many dust gatherers in the official vaults of the nations. Let anybody think for a moment, and imagine what vividness can be given to history in the future if such a plan is generally adopted throughout the world. The Americans have just been excited by a film called The Birth of a Nation; it depicts American history, and is stage-managed from the story-books dealing with the past.
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| The Birth of a Nation, poster, 1915. |
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SEEING THE ARMADA
But the proposition now under notice would give to future generations a visualised history which, as far as externals go, would be reality. Let us make a simple comparison, looking backward as well as forward. Do we want to appreciate how our descendants 300 or 400 years hence will delight in the pictures of 1916, if we are wise enough to preserve them? Then let us think of our pride in our own historical traditions, and of the romance with which they fill our minds. How marvellous would the interest and in spiration be if we could see the battle with the Spanish Armada as it must have appeared from the coast of England! With what excitement we should behold the departure of Drake for the Spanish Main, or the return of Christopher Columbus, Charles the Second (princely ne'er-do-well) coming home to his throne, or Marlborough's armies setting out for Flanders! A plan like this is fairly within the province of any State. It is sure to be instituted sooner or later, and somewhere; why not now and here? I have heard that the Commonwealth has preserved some cinema pictures of the inauguration of our political union; if that historical record is worth keeping, why not others?
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FUTURE MOVING CAMERA
The moving camera, to use a convenient shortening of phrase, has no more than begun its work in the world. The time will come when it will be as universal as the camera which every tripper carries to-day. Besides obtaining and keeping a photograph of Hilda's wedding with John, Mrs. Suburbia of half-a-century hence will have the wedding party cinemed, and in the neatly-bound album in the parlor she will keep the films, to be reproduced for the torture of her callers by the cheap and easy drawing-room process which will by that time be invented. Every boy of 14 will have his moving camera, taking pictures of the picnics he attends. In those days to come - and to come pretty soon - it will be possible, and it will not be costly, to reproduce in countless number the historical films which are preserved to-day; just as the book-publishers put out periodically their two-shilling editions of Shakespeare. The smallest elementary school will be ashamed if it has not its film library to illustrate the history lessons. No comfortable home will be fully furnished if the latest films and a good number of the standard ones are not on its library shelves. We ought then to begin at once this valuable work of historical record. Mountains of paper of much less future importance are accumulating in a million vaults and strong-rooms.
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WANTED, A NAME
If any reader will take time to think of this matter, he will see how true is the prophecy that film-history is going to be created soon enough; and his imagination will suggest to him many more ways in which it will be used. Pianola and gramophone, and so on, do infinitely less for music than the film will do for visible fact. So certain is the future, that I believe the only necessary preliminary to the immediate formation of a National Film Library is the invention of a suitable name for it. "A National Filmery? The Public Screenery?" Those are coarse names, banal and ugly. Can any reader think of the proper title? If so, let him speak up, for his will then be the honor of being the founder of the new system of national records.
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HOME 400 YEARS HENCE
I project my mind to the year 2316, AD., a mere space between breaths in the history of the world. The scene is a suburban home at Thirroul - a handy distance from Sydney for a suburbanite who likes to plane home to lunch every day. Young Bill, scolded by his mother for going out too far in his submarine, is grabbed by his father to learn his lessons for next day. At first he demurs, but since his father knows something about boys, Young Bill soon feels genuine interest in what he is being taught concerning the naval operations of 1916. He begins to laugh heartily.
"Did they really go out to the sea and fight in those funny old ships?" he asks, as big Lizzie and H.M.S. Lion steam before his eyes.
"It must have been dreadful to travel in those days," the mother sighs. "I'm a fright fully bad sailor; in the aeros I get air-sick, and the submarine liners are always stuffy - and such horrid food and common passengers!"
"Travel on the water!" says Bill.
"Not me; too dangerous. It's over it or under it for me."
"But the sea must have looked very pretty" says mother, "when there were little boats on its surface. I often think that the romance of the ocean died when surface navigation ceased in the twentieth century."
"Yes, they fought in those boats," the father says, replying to Bill's question. "What's more, they were proud of them, and took lots of trouble to build them."
"They had 'em in the Crusades," says Bill.
"No; sonny; you are mixing this history lesson with the last. These funny ships came long after the Crusades, and some of them cost millions of sovereigns."
"What were sovereigns?"
"Oh, I forgot you didn't know. Perhaps you wouldn't quite understand. In those days, when people wanted food or clothes they didn't just go down to the stores as we do with our labor-chits. They used round pieces of gold, which they called sovereigns. Enormous quantities of gold were dug out of mines a mile deep."
"Golly! It was beastly uncomfy for the fellers that did the digging."
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THE PLAGUE
"It was, Bill; and it was very unhealthy. They used to fall ill and die of tuberculosis."
"What's tuberculosis?"
"That's the white plague that visited the world. You learned about it not a fortnight ago."
"Oh, yes, I remember. Men and women died in thousands, and the dead-carts rumbled, all night and day, and the men shouted. 'Bring forth your dead,' and they put crosses on the doors with 'Lord have mercy on us.'"
So the lesson comes to an end, with Bill asking, "Mother, can I fly over to Katoomba to play hockey after school tomorrow?"
That's the situation, as any man can see it with the exercise of a little common reason. When are we going to begin the Public Filmery to let the next thousand years see how we did things in 1916? And who is going to invent the name which will make the scheme a certainty? Get the right name into the public mind, and the thing is done.
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Commentary
Whilst the above article was a bit off the mark in selecting a name for the future National Film and Sound Archive of Australia - filmery and screenery, for example, immediately bring to the writer's mind ice creamery - other prognostications are spot on. It is unfortunate that it took nations decades before action was taken in regard to M'Cay's pleas. Whilst Australia actually began collecting film with the National Library of Australia during the 1930s, it was not until 1984 that a distinct national film and sound archive was created, by which time much of the silent era footage had disappeared. The French had led the way with the creation of the Cinémathèque française in 1936, which is only fair as they were amongst the true pioneers of cinema. Though countries such as Australia, America and Great Britain were not far behind, they definitely lagged in regards to the creation of national archival institutions to collect and preserve the fragile, nitrate-based film productions prior to the introduction of sound at the end of the 1920s, whether fictional or documentary. As recently as the 1970s the archiving of major productions was neglected, and it has only been with the introduction of digitisation initiatives beginning in the early 2000s that copying, preserving and promoting through streaming has taken off. The smart phone and social media such as YouTube has meant that M'Cay/s science fiction fantasy of 1916 is now a reality. However, Young Bill, in 2136 AD, will surely look back from his Thirroul home with some degree of incredulity at the lack of foresight, despite being warned two centuries previous that such disastrous losses could have been averted.
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References
Davis, Joseph, D.H. Lawrence at Thirroul, Collins, Sydney, 1989, 252p.
Lawrence of Thirroul: Creating Kangaroo at Wyewurk [blog], 7dayadventurer.com, 11 November 2014.
M'Cay, Adam, History of the film screenings of 2136 A.D., The Sun, Sydney, 2 April 2016.
Organ, Michael, Brett Whitely and Thirroul ..... Life and Death [blog], blogger.com, 5 November 2013.
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to Professor Verhoeven for bringing the aforementioned news article to the attention of the writer who, as a retired professional archivist, is interested in the ongoing sustainability of archival institutions.
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Last updated: 16 November 2024
Michael Organ, Australia
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