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sub category of eventperformance
The Kid Stakes: with Live Accompaniment by CJ Shaw
Fatty Finn rampages through Woolloomooloo in this gem of Australian silent cinema
3:00 AM
Puffs of Smoke
Live musical performance by composer Phillip Johnston accompanying short Australian silent films
Arc Cinema
7:00PM
$35 Full / $25 Concession ( + $1.50 booking fee)
30 May, 2026
Puffs of Smoke 30 May, 2026
Unclassified | 60 mins | Various titles
Puffs of Smoke is a live musical performance featuring a program of short silent films, mostly from before 1920, accompanied by live music composed and performed by Phillip Johnston. Interspersed with these films are short narratives that together create a fantasia exploring the little-known history of the Australian silent film era.
These films combine a variety of techniques, subjects and styles, including dramatised poems, newsreel footage, fragments of bushranger melodramas, advertisements and short documentaries. The program also includes magic lantern slides from the Salvation Army’s proto-multimedia event Soldiers of the Cross (1900).
This performance includes short films and other excerpts from the NFSA collection.
ABOUT PHILLIP JOHNSTON
Phillip Johnston is a saxophonist, composer and arranger of both jazz and new music.
He has composed extensively for film, including Paul Mazursky’s Faithful, Philip Haas’ The Music of Chance and Money Man, Doris Dörrie’s Paradise and Geld, Stolen Life by Peter Rasmussen and Jackie Turnure (which won a New York Machinima Award for Best Music Score), Noise by Henry Bean, and Kathryn Millard’s Shock Room.
He has performed original scores for silent films at Sydney Film Festival, Sydney Vivid, Melbourne Festival of the Arts, MONA FOMA, Woodford Folk Festival, Revelation Perth Film Festival, Melbourne International Jazz Festival and at the Sydney Opera House, Australian Centre for the Moving Image and National Film and Sound Archive.
Arc Cinema
We are situated in the heart of Canberra on McCoy Circuit, Acton, between the shores of Lake Burley Griffin and the grounds of the Australian National University. Just a 10-minute walk from the city and state bus interchanges.
1 McCoy Circuit, Acton, ACT 2601
Film Details
Year
Various
Details
60 mins Unclassified 15+
Director
Various Titles
Countries
AUS
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