Oral History express

Watch a selection of recent Oral History interview subjects talk about their connection with the NFSA.

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Our Oral History program captures the stories behind Australia’s audiovisual industries, as experienced by those working in front of and behind the camera or the microphone. These are the filmmakers, actors, journalists, musicians, and other professionals who create the films, broadcast material and music that become part of the NFSA collection.

Some oral history interviews are more than eight hours long, and take multiple sessions to record. These are in-depth discussions in which subjects talk about their entire body of work and their personal and professional journey. Many of the interviews are recorded as audio only. Some of them we can publish online, others are available to researchers. How the interviews can be accessed is the result of a negotiation between the NFSA and the interviewees.

Recently, we’ve been filming short interviews with some of our oral history subjects for YouTube. We ask about the NFSA’s connection to them and their work. What physical object (such as a costume or prop) associated with their career should the NFSA preserve? Why is the work of the NFSA important, for their profession and for Australian society? Also, what are they working on at the moment?

In this playlist, you can watch short interviews with:

• actor John Jarratt
• journalists and broadcasters Sandra Sully, George Negus, Andrew Denton and Greig Pickhaver
• director Kim Mordaunt
• producer Emile Sherman (Academy Award winner for The King’s Speech).

Explore the Oral History program and listen to a selection of interviews on our SoundCloud channel.