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Movietone Special: Peace: Australia Celebrates opener
Title:
Movietone Special: Peace: Australia Celebrates opener
NFSA ID
9324
Year
1945
Courtesy
Cinesound Movietone Productions
This Movietone News special edition newsreel marks the nationwide celebrations at the end of the Second World War.
This clip is from the opening sequence for the Australian edition of Fox Movietone News, showing the laughing kookaburras. A superimposed graphic reads '20th Century Fox presents’ followed by 'Movietone News’ in block letters. The Movietone News graphic remains on the screen as a montage of news images plays behind. Instrumental fanfare music is used throughout. The main title fades out and the 'Movietone Special’ graphic fades up. The word 'peace’ appears on screen over an illustration of trumpets.
Both major cinema newsreels of the pre-television era – Movietone News and its all-Australian counterpart, the Cinesound Review – had iconic opening title sequences. Movietone News always began with the laughing kookaburras while Cinesound Review had the kangaroo. The fanfare music accompanying the opening graphics would have been as familiar to cinemagoers then as the theme to television news is to audiences today. Graphics and news excerpts changed over time, but the Australian fauna icons in the Cinesound and Movietone title sequences remained constant.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.