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Australasian Gazette: A Unique Audience
Title:
Australasian Gazette: A Unique Audience
NFSA ID
100862
Year
1920
This segment from an Australasian Gazette newsreel from approximately 1920 shows injured soldiers from Caulfield Military Hospital attending a special matinee screening of a film, arranged by the management at Elsternwick Theatre. Injured soldiers travel in wheelchairs or are pushed in mobile hospital beds to Elsternwick Theatre, Caulfield.
Elsternwick Theatre, now known as Classic Cinemas, is the longest continuously operating cinema in Victoria. The site, purchased in 1888, was initially a community hall and occasionally housed a makeshift cinema. The property was sold in 1911 and converted to a picture theatre before closing in 1929 at the start of the Great Depression.
The building reopened as a dance palais during the 1930s and '40s before becoming the Esquire Theatre in 1946 (and later the Sharon Theatre). It has operated as Classic Cinemas since 1971.
Summary by Elizabeth Taggart-Speers
This simple Australasian Gazette newsreel shows injured soldiers attending a matinee at Elsternwick Theatre, Caulfield in Melbourne. Apart from the title card at the beginning of the newsreel there are no intertitles for this poignant footage.
Title Synopsis
This Australasian Gazette newsreel from approximately 1920 shows injured soldiers from Caulfield Military Hospital attending a special matinee arranged by the management at Elsternwick Theatre.
Title Curator's Notes
Newsreels were an integral part of cinema programming in Australia before the advent of television in 1956. Issued on a weekly basis, newsreels enabled people to further engage with local and national political stories and events. Australasian Gazette began in 1913 and ran until the advent of talkies in the early 1930s.
Notes by Elizabeth Taggart-Speers
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.