Lights, camera, culture!

Series two of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia podcast From the Embers revisits towns impacted by the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.

The series gives voice to the people affected by the disaster and records the resilience of communities as they rebuild and face the added hardships of floods and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hear an excerpt from episode 1 of From The Embers 2: Phoenix

Travelogue of Eastern States provides a fascinating glimpse into late 1920s Australia.

Digitised from the original tinted 35mm nitrate reel, stunning colours were discovered upon scanning, bringing vibrancy to the moving images featuring iconic Australian city and landscapes scenes.

It begins with views of a sparsely populated Canberra, a sharp contrast to scenes of a busy Sydney Harbour, Bondi Beach and Melbourne's St Kilda Road. The travelogue shows the Illawarra coastline from the tops of Bulli as well as the wonders of the Blue Mountains and the Jenolan Caves, giving an insight into technology and places of interest at the time.

Watch Travelogue of Eastern States, c1929

3ZZZ began broadcasting in Melbourne in 1989 and is regarded as Australia’s largest multicultural community radio station.

With 120 programs on its weekly schedule, 3ZZZ broadcasts in many languages. It is also the first community radio station to be added to the NFSA’s off-air radio capture program, with more to come.

This clip includes extracts from 3ZZZ

Visualising 1980s gaming

Graphic artist Russel Comte designed some of Australia’s most recognisable games of the 1980s and 1990s. This collection of original art includes drawings of Gino’s pool hall from the Mugsy sequel, Mugsy’s Revenge (1986), concept art for the boxing game Sgt Slaughter’s Mat Wars (1989) and hand-drawn maps for the monster truck racing game Bigfoot (1990).

Released in 1983, Horace Goes Skiing is the second instalment of the Horace series created by William Tang for Beam Software. 

Reminiscent of the arcade game Frogger, the player must safely move Horace across a busy road to hire skis before hitting the slopes and navigating a ski course.

Horace Goes Skiing was released for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Dragon 32.

This image features one of Russel Comte's hand-drawn maps for the monster truck racing game Bigfoot (1990), created for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

Comte’s imaginings - coded into pixels and played on the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and NES - are emblematic of the era of 8-bit gaming.

View the entire drawing

Dros (2023) is an adventure platformer inspired by 1980s dark fantasy films, with nods to steampunk and anime aesthetics. 

In the game, the player switches between a little slimy creature and her human shell to solve puzzles and explore a world corrupted by Alchemy.

That steampunk-inspired world consists of 40 crafted stages to explore. EmergeWorlds, the Brisbane-based developers, envisaged each Dros stage like a modelled diorama set.

Dros received funding from the Screen Australia Games: Expansion Pack program.

These software 'demos' were produced for the Amiga computer by the Australian demo group Decay in 1990, and feature Steve Vizard and Derryn Hinch in an unofficial capacity, screen-captured from their TV programs at the time. 'Demos' were audiovisual demonstrations of the multimedia capabilities of a computer in the form of a computer program. Rival groups made up of artists, coders, and musicians competed to produce the best demos that could push the limits of a computer. In the pre-web era, these demos were distributed on floppy disks (either swapped in person or sent in the mail) or downloaded (very slowly) by dialling into a bulletin board.

The late Darryll Reynolds had a prolific career as an independent video game and software developer, creating illustrated text adventure games such as King Solomon’s Mines (1983), The Secret of Bastow Manor (1983) and Thermonuclearwargames (1984).

This collection of Reynolds’ material includes software and accompanying documentation such as working notes and diagrams on gameplay design, printed computer code, and organisational papers, which give insight into the first two decades of the video games industry in Australia.

Created by and starring Aussie husband-and-wife team Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, Colin from Accounts has become a fan favourite thanks to its awkward (and at times relatable!) romantic comedy.

Now renewed for a second season, Colin from Accounts has streamed in the US and UK and won the 2023 Logie Awards for Most Outstanding Actress, Actor and Comedy Program.

Watch a clip from the first episode of Colin from Accounts featuring Patrick Brammall, Harriet Dyer and Annie Maynard

Made from a semi-autobiographical script by writer-director Noor Niasari, the Australian feature film Shayda (2023) tells the story of an Iranian immigrant (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) finding refuge from domestic violence in a suburban Melbourne women’s shelter. 

Executive-produced by Cate Blanchett, Shayda premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and opened the Melbourne International Film Festival. Niasari was nominated for Best First-Time Feature Director at the Directors Guild of America awards.

Watch a clip from Shayda featuring Zar Amir Ebrahimi and Leah Purcell

This web series combines queer sexual health education with a rom-com storyline.

When Saffie (Gemma Bird Matheson) discovers she has herpes, she reaches out to Bek (Kasia Vickery), the one-night stand who ghosted her ­– and the only person she’s ever slept with.

Created by Matheson and Vickery, the series premiered at the Mardi Gras Film Festival in 2023 and is hosted by Wear It Purple. Matheson also wrote for and appeared in the web series The Housemate (2017) and TV series The PM's Daughter (2022). 

Watch a clip from Me and Her(pes)

Warning: this clip contains sexual references

The Mushroom Group is Australia’s largest independent music company. It contains several music labels focusing on various genres, including Bloodlines, Ivy League and Liberation Records. Over the last three years, the NFSA has collected all releases relating to Australian artists under the Mushroom banner.

Kylie Minogue's 'Padam Padam' (2023) was the lead single from her 16th studio album, Tension (2023). It became her first UK Top 10 and Australian Top 20 single in more than 10 years and won the inaugural award for Best Pop Dance Recording at the 66th Grammy Awards and Best Pop Release at the ARIA Awards.

The Vamps broke the mould by becoming Australia’s first all-female rock band in April 1965.

This audio documentary by Holly Alexander features interviews with band founder and guitarist Margaret Britt and bassist Joy Carroll.

Learn more about the Vamps and listen to the audio documentary The Vamps: Australia's First All-Female Rock Band (2022)

‘Chance to Lose Control’ is taken from Dan Sultan’s 5th album, Dan Sultan (2023). A proud Arrernte Gurindji man, the award-winning singer-songwriter, said the song is about finding peace with yourself.

Other Mushroom Group artists whose music was collected through this partnership include Archie Roach, the Teskey Brothers, DMA’s, Confidence Man, the Rubens and Maina Doe.

Beam Software and Melbourne House developed and published many of Australia’s iconic early video games. Pulled from the pages of international computer game magazines, such as the UK publication ZZAP!64, these advertisements show the reach and popularity of Australian games like The Hobbit (1982) and The Way of the Exploding Fist (1985).

The image above shows part of an advertisement for Judge Dredd. Follow this link to view more.

The Reverend Percy Edwards Visual Archive is an extensive collection of glass slides, equipment and manuscripts that has been in the Edwards family for six generations.

The magic lantern pictured above, manufactured in London by W Watson and Sons, projected glass slides and is considered a forerunner of the film projector. Philanthropist Fred Grimwade gifted a magic lantern to Percy Edwards in 1898.

The Rev. Percy Edwards Visual Archive was donated to the NFSA by the Edwards Family of Melbourne.