Centre for Media History, Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia | Education

Centre for Media History, Macquarie University

Locality: Sydney, Australia

Phone: +61 2 9850 2180

Address: Macquarie University 2109 Sydney, NSW, Australia

Website: www.mq.edu.au/research/research-centres-groups-and-facilities/resilient-societies/centres/centre-for-media-history

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24.01.2022 The films from the ABC's Natural History Unit (cut in 2007) are an archive of what our continent has, or had, which is unique. A new 23-part series (15 episodes airing in 2020 and 8 episodes in 2021) draws on the work of this unit, and the wealth of footage and research that is its unique legacy to us. Here are films depicting Australian wildlife, "from orca pods to wombat kingdoms, the dramatic landscapes of Kakadu and the Red Centre, and the vast aquatic wildernesses of the... Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans". Archivist at the ABC says the Unit's "crews shot in locations ranging from Papua New Guinea to the Galapagos Islands to Antarctica and, as I understand it, pioneered many innovative tricks and techniques in the field of wildlife cinematography, including hiding a motion-sensor-equipped camera in a box, or waiting for hours in a tree, camouflaged by netting, for the animal they wanted to show up." Retrieving, restoring and digitising the original footage and weaving it together with the latest science into new stories was a huge, time-consuming undertaking..." A crew of over 60 people worked across the last year and a half to make the show. Steiner also says: "High-resolution scanning really brought out the cinematic quality and richness of colour of the material. Australia Remastered has done the material justice in ways beyond my wildest dreams." Also take a glimpse of some behind the scenes action from the ground-breaking ABC Natural History Unit series the Nature of Australia from 1988 on ABC RN's OffTrack show: https://www.abc.net.au//offtrack/behind-the-natur/12596512 See https://www.abc.net.au//boxing-kangaroos-rare-abc/12601346 See more

24.01.2022 75 Years: VE Day. How the BBC captured May 8 1945, the end of the war in Europe, by media historian David Hendy. Hendy lists some of what was heard on the radio 'BBC Home service', and the Australian renowned war correspondent Chester Wilmot was there with a live piece from Germany: "There are messages from miners in South Wales and theres community singing from Bangor. The war correspondent Chester Wilmot pops up via a mobile transmitter somewhere in Germany, to speak not just to a Wing-Commander, but a private and a driver." On May 4 Wilmot was there too (for the BBC), the only correspondent to witness the historic German surrender with Montgomery at Luneberg near Hamburg. Sadly only one clip of Wilmot is available on the ABC and that is from Tobruk. https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/100-voices/ww2/ve-day

23.01.2022 Congratulations! Wonderful news for Dr Tom Murray and Dr Karen Pearlman, CMH members and distinguished filmmakers whose films are awards finalists in this year's Sydney Film Festival. Tom Murray's 'The Skin of Others' exploring the extraordinary life of Aboriginal WW1 soldier Douglas Grant, is shortlisted for the Documentary Australia Foundation Award for Best Australian Documentary; and 'I Want to Make a Film About Women', directed by Pearlman, is among the finalists for the Dendy Awards for Australian Short Film. See https://ondemand.sff.org.au/film/the-skin-of-others/ and https://ondemand.sff.org.au//i-want-to-make-a-film-about-/

23.01.2022 This is the CEO of the National Archives of Australia telling us much of the NAA's audiovisual heritage is threatened and can't be saved. Perhaps he knows details we don't from the recent Tune Review into the Archives & that things are not looking good? The Review was completed apparently at the end of January & Mr Tune's report submitted to the Attorney-General. However as far as our Centre is aware there has been no public release of this report that received so many submis...sions. Such a release is 'at the discretion of the Attorney-General' apparently, according to the NAA website: https://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/tune-review. Many submissions also urged that significant funds are needed to digitize (thus save) this irreplaceable material. In the Madsen CMH submission the extent of what could be lost & the urgency of doing so by 2025 were stressed or we risk losing significant audio & audiovisual heritage. In other similar 'rich' developed nations national archives like this have already been saved through adequate funds and digitization initiatives. At the very least, the public should have access to the report & its recommendations: these are our & future Australians national archives. Some of this material is of world heritage status, i.e Indigenous films and recordings, plus the NAA holds a massive collection of the ABC's programs. https://www.canberratimes.com.au//theres-no-way-we-can-s/ See more

20.01.2022 Black America's first investigative journalist had a lot to reveal about the Belgian King Leopold II. As the statues come down today, we reflect on those who might more rightfully replace those falling from grace. George Washington Williams should be returned to history in this narrative today. A whistleblower and first Black American investigative journalist (according to Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at... Harvard University), Williams played a key role in bringing the world's attention to the state of violence otherwise known as the 'Congo free state' (1885-1906) and controlled by King Leopold II of Belgium. Along with the English missionary and photographer Alice Seeley Harris, Williams' revelations eventually sparked a widespread public backlash shaming the Belgian king into relinquishing control, but only after millions had perished under his rule. While this story was written end 2014 it is as pertinent today as ever; so too is the media history it opens up to shed a light on our current times and those of our collective colonial past. I will also post the letter to King Leopold Williams wrote which is available publicly, as this is an extraordinary read. As Gates writes also, "Williams made his greatest impact as a historian, cranking out close to 1,100 pages in his two-volume set History of the Negro Race in America, 1619-1880: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens, published in New York in 1883. Having honed his skills as a writer at a seminary, Williams was lauded for his innovative investigatory skills, including interviews, contacting generals for information and soliciting church records and any other documents to fill in the gaps others had left". https://www.theroot.com/who-was-black-america-s-1st-investi See more

20.01.2022 As the world remembers the end of World War 2 75 years ago, this story looks at one artist who challenged the growing media machine of the German National Socialists. John Heartfield who had originally trained in advertising, exposed the truth behind Nazi lies with his ingeniously crafted images. With others he forged a new art form photomontage where two or more photos are combined to create the new, the shock of the new. This style would become central to Berlin Dada and would be used to challenge 'fake news' propaganda of the Nazis. Heartfield said its was all about showing the truth behind the image by 'making the lie obvious'. https://www.bbc.com//20200713-the-images-that-fought-the-n

19.01.2022 Thursday 15th Oct 10am via ZOOM A Public Talk on Information Activism: A Queer History of Lesbian Media Technologies (Duke University Press, 2020) with Cait McKinney - Details: https://bit.ly/36yPGsX

19.01.2022 From the wonderful blog of 'Europeana'. At the Royal Institute for Blind Youths in Paris Valentin Haüy experimented with embossed plates and wet paper producing the first tactile text in 1786. Charles Barbier, an officer in Napoleons army, had invented a writing system of raised dots to help armies communicate in the dark. War left many soldiers with visual impairments caused by injury and disease. Barbier realised his night writing could help them, and many others with si...milar impairments, to read. In 1821 he presented it at the National Institute for Blind Youths in Paris. One audience member was a young Louis Braille, who would become the father of tactile type as we know it today. Europeana provides access to millions of digitised cultural heritage items books, artworks, recordings, newspapers and more and research and commentary written by cultural heritage professionals from across Europe. See more

17.01.2022 Honorary CMH associate Michael J. Socolow reflects on coronavirus coverage and how journalists, sensationalizing the trivial and untrue in a rush for novelty "can prioritize sensationalism over depth" and "elevate the newest tidbit of information over more important reporting". This is particularly true in times of long-running historical events such as the current pandemic, he reveals, drawing on media history. "When a clear beginning, middle, and resolution are not discernible, the demand for any morsel of new information can confuse, rather than clarify, the story." Socolow is associate professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine. He visited CMH in 2019 as part of a Fulbright Fellowship. https://www.niemanlab.org//aiming-for-novelty-in-coronavi/

17.01.2022 Our media history is everywhere. Take the 'sound chair'. The Australian pavilion at Expo 67 included 240 of these from Melbourne-based contemporary furniture designers Grant and Mary Featherston. The Featherstons developed the talking chair to deliver information about Australia to visitors in seated comfort. Tapes playing through the chairs featured famous Australians Sir Robert Menzies, Sir Hudson Fysh, Sir Robert Helpmann, Sir Mark Oliphant. The conversations were recorded by Crawford Productions, the Melbourne radio and television production company, before being dubbed onto tape by the ABC. French translations recorded by the Royal Australian Air Forces foreign language school. Transcripts are held at the National Archives of Australia (NAA A463, 1965/5067 Part 4): https://www.nma.gov.au//highlights/expo-mark-ii-sound-chair

16.01.2022 Today is 75 years since the Japanese surrender. Radio played a role. 15 August 1945, the "son of heaven" Emperor Hirohito did something no emperor had ever done before: he went on the radio. This broadcast was the first case in which ordinary people in Japan officially heard the emperor's voice. He broke tradition even as his vast armies still controlled China and were still largely undefeated there. He was motivated to be sure. The Americans had dropped two atomic bombs on H...iroshima and Nagasaki killing and maiming hundreds of thousands. On the day of the second atomic bomb, Joseph Stalin declared war on Japan and his armies were moving through Manchuria, soon they would reach the northern island, Hokkaido. Firestorms from extensive allied aerial bombing also had wiped out much of Tokyo. All of this weighed on the Emperor's mind perhaps, as he finally spoke to his subjects. The "Gyokuon-hoso" orjewel voice broadcast was actually recorded onto discs, then broadcast. All subjects were instructed to listen: many kneeling, such was the power of this unearthly transmission. Today the speech lives on because NHK (Japan's public broadcaster) restored the discs it had preserved, making them public in 2015 for the first time. Read a translation: https://www.atomicheritage.org/key-do/jewel-voice-broadcast And listen: https://commons.wikimedia.org//File:Imperial_Rescript_on_t See more

16.01.2022 According to Kim Williams, Chair of the Copyright Agency, and drawing on analysis he undertook for the Whitlam Institute, literature funding stands at just $5 million (compared with $4.2 million 30 years ago). Considering inflation and population growth, it should be at $12 million today at least, says Williams, adding that when the Australia Council released details of its 4-year funding round recently: "the results were devastating for literature", and "some of the country...s major literary magazines were eliminated". With government funding for the Arts historically so low, no package to help those hit most hard by COVID 19, Williams reminds that Dame Mary Gilmore, acclaimed Australian poet, was Scott Morrisons great-great aunt. Not only is she on the $10 note, when she died Sydney witnessed the first state funeral accorded to an Australian writer since the death of Henry Lawson 40 years before. Gilmore was one of the founding patrons of the original Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) established in 1928. Its aim was to promote the development and study of Australian literature and theatre, and to "render aid and assistance to Australian authors, artists and dramatists" (Len Fox, Ed. 1988. Dream at a Graveside: History of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, 19281988). Gilmore was also active in the New South Wales Institute of Journalists and the Aboriginal Australian Fellowship. Does Scott Morrison need to know a little more about the great works of his great great aunt, then consider what she might have done in this time of crisis for arts and culture in Australia? https://www.smh.com.au//our-creative-community-s-collapse- See more

15.01.2022 One hundred years ago (June 15, 1920) the worlds first advertised live entertainment broadcast was transmitted from Chelmsford, England. In a world coming out of its own pandemic lockdown (Spanish Flu 1919) and with the help of sponsorship from the Daily Mail newspaper baron, Viscount Northcliffe, radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi created the sensation he needed to generate worldwide interest in his new 'wireless' invention, the Wireless Phone. Now, rather than Morse Code br...oadcasts, or even duller readings of train timetables, the world famous diva Nellie Melba agreed to sing. The Australian Dame did not come cheap, costing Marconi 1,000 - today's equivalent here of about $80,000. A special train from London to Chelmsford delivered our prima donna into a waiting white Rolls Royce, while crowds lined the route to the 'venue': not so glamorous, a mere packing shed in the yard of Marconi's factory. But Melba's 30 minute recital was heard from Paris to Persia, reportedly as far as Newfoundland. Melba was also filmed by Pathe Film. She, Helen Porter Mitchell, adopted the professional name Melba to acknowledge her birthplace, Melbourne. https://www.itv.com//the-centenary-of-the-first-marconi-b/ See more

15.01.2022 In latest issue of Feminist Media Histories Macquarie University Media and Cultural Studies scholars Jane Simon and Nicole Mathews explore environmental politics, gender and landscape photography in Australia from the 1980s-1990s.

15.01.2022 Congratulations to Macquarie University CMH member Dr Karen Pearlman who has recently taken away another Best Director award for her 2019 film, ‘I want to make a film about women’. She won the award for Short Documentary at the 2020 Australian Screen Directors Guild Awards. Other awards for the film and Karen include, Best Director at the inaugural CinefestOz Short Film Awards (2020), Award for Creative Achievement at the Brisbane International Film Festival, Special Mention at the 2020 Sydney Film Festival’s Dendy Awards for the film's ‘ambitious and masterful mix of forms.’ It also won Best Documentary at the St Kilda Film Festival (Victoria), qualifying the film for an Academy Award nomination. Here's a taste. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIUyOpWBwjU

15.01.2022 High praise in Guardian review for filmmaker and CMH member Tom Murrays new documentary film screening in the Sydney Film Festival: "Tom Murrays overarching approach is more about open questions than closed statements; the process of learning rather than the drawing of conclusions." Festival runs digitally from 10-21 June. https://www.theguardian.com//the-skin-of-others-review-bal

14.01.2022 Australian Historical Society Special Event Day Lecture, 1-2pm, Wednesday 21 October Suburban Noir... Peter Doyle More information:https://bit.ly/3lXBrlL

14.01.2022 Sharing George Washington Williamss 1890 Open Letter to the Belgian King: "Every charge which I am about to bring against your Majestys personal Government in the Congo has been carefully investigated...and data has been faithfully prepared..All the crimes perpetrated in the Congo have been done in your name, and you must answer at the bar of Public Sentiment for the misgovernment of a people, whose lives and fortunes were entrusted to you by the august Conference of Berlin..., 18841885. I now appeal to the Powers which committed this infant State to your Majestys charge, and to the great States which gave it international being; and whose majestic law you have scorned and trampled upon, to call and create an International Commission to investigate the charges herein preferred in the name of Humanity, Commerce, Constitutional Government and Christian Civilisation." I note this is very disturbing reading. https://www.blackpast.org//george-washington-williams-ope/ See more

14.01.2022 75 years since the bombing of Hiroshima: historian of science and nuclear weapons, Alex Wellerstein asks; what should journalists know if they intend to write another anniversary story?? See also his just out new story on how difficult it is to know how many were killed in the two bombings, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. https://thebulletin.org//counting-the-dead-at-hiroshima-an http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com//what-journalists-should-k/

14.01.2022 Great little piece from the ABC program Nationwide, 1981, on the history and achievements of the 'Green Bans' and Builders' Labourers' Federation leader and Green Bans' organiser, Jack Mundey who died yesterday at age 90. Not only did his action and movement save Sydney heritage uniting liberals and labor supporters against developers, the phrase green ban (instead of 'black ban') coined in 1973 by Jack Mundey would be a brilliant communications move. It also inspired the German activist Petra Kelly who visited Sydney in the mid-1970s. When she returned to Germany in 1979 she established the German Green Party. https://education.abc.net.au/home#!/media/521067/

11.01.2022 In this interview by Henry Jenkins with Doron Galili on the publication of his compelling new book, Seeing by Electricity: The Emergence of Television, 1878-1939, we get a glimpse of this significant new contribution to media history, which takes a "deep historical dive into how television took shape as a concept in the late 19th century and the complex ways that television intercepts other communication systems, not just radio or cinema but also the telegraph and the telepho...ne." Did you realize experimental television broadcasts were being trialed as early as 1928? Can we consider Zoom as a platform coming close to the original conception of television? These and other questions are considered in this Jenkins 'Confessions of an Aca-Fan' blog. Part 2 of this interview available on the site. Doron Galili is Researcher in the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University. He is the author of Seeing by Electricity: The Emergence of Television, 1878-1939 (Duke University Press, 2020) and coeditor of Corporeality in Early Cinema: Viscera, Skin, and Physical Form (Indiana University Press, 2018). http://henryjenkins.org///3/an-interview-with-doron-galili

10.01.2022 Rebecca Sheehan marks the passing of one of the greats of rock and roll, Little Richard, who rightfully could claim the title, king and queen of the blues. One of 12 children, "nicknamed for his smallness as a child", Little Richard developed his "charismatic singing, piano and performance styles playing in black and Pentecostal churches" but also from traditions, as Sheehan reminds us, of "black drag performance that formed an integral part of the culture of rhythm and blu...es". His "gender-bending" "wild whoops and falsetto screeches" in songs filled with "suggestive lyrics" and "camp style" influenced so many of rock's superstars, from James Brown to Mick Jagger to Prince. In a "conservative, racially segregated, 1950s America" too, when Little Richard emerged to blend the sacred and the profane, he did change the world in ways we might now marvel upon. https://theconversation.com/a-lop-bam-boom-little-richards- Sheehan is Program Director of Gender Studies at Macquarie University, and a centre member. See more

09.01.2022 1959 Sydney Walsh Bay concert a classic! This is an unusual lunchtime break for over 500 Waterside workers treated to the visiting Czech Philharmonic brought to Australia by The ABC and Musica Viva. Musica Viva turns 75 this year and was one of the first of a number of new cultural organizations established in Australia in the post war period. The ABC and Musica Viva have collaborated since 1945 and this is a beautifully made audiovisual post card, a glimpse in striking sounds and images of Walsh Bay when it was another world. Thanks ABC Classic and archives.

08.01.2022 The American Top 40 radio show hosted by Casey Kasem premiered 50 years ago this week. The program became a fixture on commercial radio stations worldwide, Australia included. However the 'Top 40' format evolved much earlier. Nebraska radio broadcaster Todd Storz is credited with its invention in the 1950s. He purchased the Omaha radio station KOWH with his father in 1949 and then he and program director, Bill Stewart, noticed how patrons at a bar kept playing the same few so...ngs on the jukebox. Stewart copied the titles on the box and came up with 30 tunes (which he later upped to 40). Soon after this discovery, Storz gave his station a new 'format', playing the top hits of the day all day long. This was such a success KOWH went from last to first in Omaha in 2 years. Storz then spread his new idea by buying additional radio stations. By the early 1960s, the dominant broadcaster in almost every radio market was a Top 40 station. In Sydney Top 40 radio began on Sunday 2 March 1958 when 2UE began playing and promoting the format as a daily feature, accompanied by the issuing of a weekly chart. https://www.npr.org//50-years-ago-casey-kasem-began-counti Hear Casey Kasem from the collection at the NFSA and from the days when the show came weekly to the radio station via airmail as two pressed vinyl albums: https://www.nfsa.gov.au/lat/casey-kasem-and-american-top-40 and more on the history via NFSA: https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/top-40-radio-turns-60 See more

08.01.2022 Anticipating the needs of the future, historians around the world have joined together to create a live digital archive of peoples experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic: A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of COVID-19. The project takes its name from Daniel Defoes 1722 novel on the 1665 Plague in London. An online archive, it is led by researchers from Arizona State University, but anyone can submit content an image, document, audio recording or video and what i...t means to them. The sites technical architecture and approach to crowdsourcing builds upon previous efforts to document times of crisis, including the September 11 Digital Archive and the Hurricane Katrina Digital Memory Bank. The nature of an archive constructed from participants who knowingly make contributions also provides another interesting dimension for students, and: History students often view archives uncritically, as if these collections had no provenance or as if these collections have no impact on the history that we write and produce. Nothing could be further from the truth. This work exposes that provenance." Some of the more intense efforts will become project websites within the archive, such as the Oral History Project or the Australia Collecting effort. See https://covid-19archive.org/s/Australia/page/about and https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/a/journal-of-the-plague-year See more

08.01.2022 A question of just the facts? Before "fact checking" or fake news, here is a magazine to look at again from 1964. With its simple one word title: "fact:", it was created by Ralph Ginzburg who had been convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for publishing transgressions less than a year earlier in another magazine venture. Refusing to be silenced, and beyond the legal appeal, he created a new magazine: "Fact:" The logo was designed by the brilliant designer Herb Lubal...in with whom Ginzberg had created Eros magazine. Based on Caslon 540 type but with the f slightly modified to mimic the t, it has the small but ingenious addition of the colon. Its not part of the name, but was Lubalins graphic invention. As this beautifully presented short media history suggests; "Its genius because it makes you read the headline of the cover beginning with the word fact. Everything is thus framed as a factwhether it is or isnt is up to you to decide." Ginzberg is remembered as "a taboo-busting editor and publisher who helped set off the sexual revolution in the 1960's" (New York Times, July 7, 2006). He was a journalist, publisher, and editor who began his career at the "Washington Times-Herald", 1949-1951. He wrote freelance articles and also worked as an editor for "Esquire", 1956-1958; "Eros", 1962-1963; and "Fact" 1964, and "Avant Garde" 1968. He was sued for libel by Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Goldwater won. Apparently Goldwater did not appreciate the full page cover which stated "1189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater is Psychologically Unfit To Be President!" (Vol 1, Issue 5). See the cover in this link. See more

07.01.2022 Drawing on more than 30 years of activism, Juno Gemes has created a unique and important visual record commemorating the history of Indigenous struggle in Australia. Her exhibition, Proof: Portraits from The Movement 1978 2003, captures the turning points in Indigenous history and events that have shaped the reconciliation process and shamed and celebrated Australia as a nation. These portraits of illegal protest, and others she captured at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Ca...nberra in 1983, the Ceremonial handing back of Uluru in 1985 and the Reconciliation Walk over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2000 can be viewed from the original show which continues as a Macquarie University Art Gallery (MUAG) traveling exhibition. Proof was partnered by The National Portrait Gallery & MUAG. The full set of Proof Prints are held in Macquarie University's Art Collection, viewable online here http://www.junogemes.com/exhibitions/proof/01.htm and selected here: https://www.portrait.gov.au/exhibitions/proof-2003 See more

06.01.2022 June 28 marks 140 years since the infamous last stand of Ned Kelly and his gang at Glenrowan. Along with the police, four Victorian journalists were there to witness the battle and the capture of Ned. Macquarie University CMH member and media historian Willa McDonald and UNSW academic Kerrie Davies argue these vivid accounts published soon after the 1880 bloody shootout have been influencing portrayals of the bushrangers ever since. This article offers a journey of discovery ...into the legend, and a rich encounter with the myriad fictional and 'non-fictional' depictions from early Australian 'gonzo' journalism to the celebrated novel based on the Kellys by Peter Carey. Also linked here in this genealogy is the worlds first feature film, with footage from The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) restored by the Australian National Film and Sound Archive. https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-a-gonzo-press-. See more

06.01.2022 https://www.abc.net.au//news-corp-regional-newspa/12413736

06.01.2022 Wonderful work (NGV) from artists David Chesworth and Sonia Leber: 'We are printers too'. This is a meditation on lost media and communication forms, and a beau...tiful and haunting reflection on the human urge for communication. It is also a calling up of the very specific sonic memories, the special noises and energies still latent in The (Melbourne) Age building. It offers a playful media archaeology within the now abandoned powerhouse of the newspaper, as well as being a poignant homage to a lost time and space in our media history. The full artwork (15 min sound video performance work) is only available to watch online until tomorrow 17 July. A short accompanying video includes the artists. See more

06.01.2022 May 8, 1970 was also the first of the Moratorium marches against the Vietnam war and conscription. Across Australia, over 200,000 people took part, with an estimated 100,000 turning out in Melbourne for a peaceful occupation of the city. Here the march is captured 50 years ago on ABC's This Day Tonight. Comment from ABC producer and journalist Liz Jackson also on this site who remembers the day. https://www.abc.net.au//80d/stories/2012/01/19/3411534.htm Another version is available here https://education.abc.net.au/home

05.01.2022 Funds boost just announced to help save our audiovisual media heritage. NFSA CEO Jan Müller: With this funding we will be able to save thousands of hours of radio, television and music, before the tapes that contain them become unplayable. By digitising the collection, we are not only preserving it for future generations; we are also making it more easily discoverable, accessible and re-usable...We will also be able to establish the National Centre for Excellence in Audiovis...ual Heritage - a hub for digitisation across Australia. We will share our skills, knowledge and equipment to safeguard the national audiovisual heritage held by other institutions. On behalf of all Australian collecting institutions, we are grateful for this funding boost and the opportunity to meet Deadline 2025. https://www.nfsa.gov.au/nfsa-receives-55m-boost-digitise-na See more

05.01.2022 The ABC's Peter Luck on the artist Christo, and his plans for Little Bay's cliff-lined South Pacific Ocean shore to be turned into the largest single artwork that had ever been made at the time (created with his wife, Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon). For 10 weeks from October 28, 1969, 92,900 square metres of fabric and 56.3 kilometres of rope were used to wrap 2.5 kilometres of coastline, and reaching up cliffs 26 metres high in Sydney's eastern suburbs. All materials were removed and recycled and the site was returned to its original condition at project end. From the vaults of ABC Arts reporting.

03.01.2022 Over 100 years ago, users of new and old forms of communication tech were both constrained by a pandemic and propelled by it. So too, struggles over the pandemic narrative, the platforms and the messages aligned with millions of deaths, and a transformed media landscape. 5 lessons from new media during the 1918 waves of Influenza and racial terror. How do these reflections on a repressed media history compare to today? Story from Immerse, June 2020 https://immerse.news/collective-amnesia-792933233419

03.01.2022 Streaming is being used now by museums and collecting institutions around the world to allow audiences to access historic film heritage. The potential is there to connect a wider public to this wealth of digitised material formerly locked up in material archives. This new access is also a response from organizations to COVID 19, after the shutdown around the world of these repositories. Victoria Duckett (Deakin Uni) wonders why this new openness (and the promise of the digital commons?) does not seem to be possible in Australia as she compares our situation with Italy and the UK. A provocative read, and CMH notes again the great threat to our film and other audiovisual archives overall due to the lack of government investment in preservation and digitisation. https://theconversation.com/international-film-archives-are?

03.01.2022 The humble face mask and image of the plague mask as history and media history in China: a podcast and online story from '99% Invisible'. Features Christos Lynteris, a medical anthropologist who explains how important photos were (in newspapers in particular) in depicting the outbreak of 1910-1911 Manchuria. As he says, Photography played a key role in establishing this idea of a global outbreak, an outbreak which is spreading across the globe. We hear the story of the fir...st use of the mask in Manchuria, spreading then everywhere, and the young Chinese-Malaysian doctor named Wu Lien-teh who introduced them, and who had gone abroad to study medicine in Europe. "The Qing Dynasty government called him in to lead the Chinese efforts against the plague" which killed 95% of those contracting it. Even as Wu was "immediately greeted with disdain from his Russian, Japanese, British, and French counterparts in the medical field", he was a brilliant scientist, and quickly deduced that "this disease was a pneumonic plague, meaning it was airborne and spread through droplets in the air". Despite opposition from many European scientists, he advised that people should start covering their mouth and nose with face masks. This of course worked, and the rest is history. The online story also takes us on a journey tracing 'the mask' in China, from early medical use of Glass Lantern Slides to State created mass posters. A historian at the Shanghai Library, Vivian Huang, recounts how masks in Chinese culture only became normal because they were required by the state. Wearing masks she says was promoted through propaganda posters, in the newspapers, and various other public health campaigns." A neglected side of pandemic histories: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/masking-for-a-friend/ See more

03.01.2022 New article on history of women photographers from AWARE: Since its creation in 2014, AWARE has worked to make women artists of the 20th century visible, producing and posting free bilingual (French/English) content about their work on its website. Biographies are published online & largely originate from the Dictionnaire universel des créatrices (Universal dictionary of female creators), published in 2013 thanks to a partnership with the Éditions des Femmes Antoinette Fouque. This directory has no limitations on medium or country. Lots more on this site in English and French. AWARE = Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions (established 2014) https://awarewomenartists.com//la-photographie-une-histoi/

03.01.2022 An illuminating new addition to the Women Film Pioneers project mentioned in our earlier posts: this is an important figure in the history of film, the renowned editor and film artist, Elizaveta Svilova (of classic early Soviet documentary film Kino-Pravda fame, co-conspirator and wife to Dziga Vertov). There is a link also here to our Centre's Karen Pearlman and her film 'After the Facts', the second in a trilogy of films she has made about Russian women in the Soviet Montage era.

02.01.2022 Around the world the news has been filled with striking images of people protesting as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. In the 1960s, Magnum photographer Bruce Davidson chronicled the protests of the civil rights movement in the US. Here he is (BBC) speaking of his experiences and as we learn how these extraordinary images were taken. Through the Lens: Witnessing history. https://www.bbc.com//20171123-how-bruce-davidsons-civil-ri

01.01.2022 Pulitzers announced with special citation to Ida B. Wells. She was among the first people recognized when The New York Times launched its interactive Overlooked series of obituaries people whose deaths did not merit a writeup at the time. "Wells pioneered reporting techniques that remain central tenets of modern journalism. New york Times 'Overlooked': https://www.nytimes.com//obitu/overlooked-ida-b-wells.html The award was for "her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching. The citation comes with a bequest by the Pulitzer Prize board of at least $50,000 in support of her mission". All winners https://www.pulitzer.org//announcement-2020-pulitzer-prize