Saving TV

Article copied from ABC Wimmera's Facebook, (if you follow the link to the ABC's website you can also view the 2 short videos and reminisce)-

Treasure trove of historical Mildura footage saved in WIN TV building clear-out

A historian has saved approximately 80 per cent of the historical footage stored at Mildura's original local TV bureau from being thrown out in a clean-out of the building. Archival news footage taken of the town in the 1960s and '70s, documenting important local events such as flooding of the Murray River, has been salvaged from the former WIN TV building.

WIN TV Swan Hill

The other 20 per cent of the historical footage has been donated to other historians.

Local history enthusiast and founder of Frames of History Ian MacWilliams says he received a call from the station's staff manager Steven Menegaldo to rescue the documentation.

The establishment was occupied by Sunraysia Television 9 (STV8) in 1965, then was used by WIN News from 2006 before the station was forced to close in a statewide restructure in 2015.

"The footage goes all the way back to the STV8 days, when of course back at the start that was shot on 16-millimetre film, and eventually became tape all sorts of different type formats," Mr MacWilliams said.

"The original materials are news film, and then later on, there was news film and commercial film, which used to make the ads so all of that material has been stored at WIN TV, since it was on TV.

"That material has over time become available to me. I got hold of the 16 millimetre footage and last year in 2022 I've been able to get access to the remaining footage, which is mostly tape, all sorts of different tape."

Oftentimes, Mr MacWilliams said, videographers at STV8 and WIN News were responsible for capturing the only footage of Mildura events.

"It was then the only source of local news because the stations weren't networked," he said.

"Everything was created for local TV. It was for local consumption so when something happened in history, a news item happened in town, STV8 was sent out and they filmed it.

"Pretty much every event that we've got as a news story would never be seen again if it hadn't been rescued because it's really the only footage if it hadn't been shot by a private person, that was the only coverage of the event."

Part of a bigger picture

The Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI) is working with partner institution Ballarat Television 6 (BTV-6) to save their archive under a similar circumstance.

Head of collections and preservation at ACMI Melbourne Nick Richardson said regional material was a critically important part of the national screen museum's collection.

"Congratulations to [Mr MacWilliams] for going and salvaging the footage," Mr Richardson said.

"We've been instrumental in taking quite a bit of that [Ballarat's] original footage from the past six years and attempting and beginning to preserve that.

"What's really important is that there's so much content out there that no single institution can hope to preserve so having a network of organisations and interested individuals who can share that burden, I think is really important.

"And there's an opportunity for us all to share our information around technology and how best to preserve that."

Mr Richardson said the regions were under represented in ACMI's national collection.

"Our earliest item goes back to the 1890s but certainly the majority of that Australian-based footage tends to focus on the bigger centres," he said.

"So, the regional material is incredibly important. It gives us an insight into the social and economic history of those regions and I think it's a really fascinating way for emerging current and emerging generations to connect with the past and with their area.

"It's often been said that we can understand the personal look towards the future without fully understanding our past so the material is incredibly important to the country."

You learn from the past

Historian Pam Cupper grew up in Mildura and said she was delighted to hear about Mr MacWilliams' rescue project.

"I'd actually heard over the years that the material from the STV8 and WIN studios had been lost, or some of it had been lost anyway, so when I heard I was so delighted that a lot of the material seems to have been kept and hopefully now it's going to be maintained, which is such a great historical record," Ms Cupper said.

Ms Cupper said she was hopeful to see footage of inter-school debates in the 1960s recovered.

"And the [coverage of the] floods on the Murray River are really big at the moment and the marching girls were a phenomena in the late 1960s, early 1970s and I have become more interested in it from a historical point of view," she said.

"I don't have great kind of particular things that I want to want to see but I would like to see my old home as it was 50 years ago.

"It's important if you grew up there or you didn't grow up there. I'm a historian so I have a view that we can learn from the past."

By Tamara Clark ABC Mildura-Swan Hill

Hope the BTV-6 film is also saved, digitised and made available. (One of the old station identifier commercials has great video of the Wimmera's mobile library travelling to Laharum, would love to see that again).

Describing The Dry

As we did previously with 'The Dressmaker' posts, have endeavoured to find some of the locations used in the filming of 'The Dry'

A greener Beulah on Google Earth

 The opening shots of the approach to Kiewarra are from along the Birchip-Rainbow Rd coming into Beulah from Beulah East, with all the GEB silos & stacks, and the hay-bale storage.

St Joseph's

The funeral was shot in Banyena, at St Joseph’s Catholic Church where the mourners really do walk down the approach lane to the Banyena Hall for the Wake.

Banyena Hall

The Cemetery is the Beulah Cemetery, like the opening scene, on the Birchip-Rainbow road to Beulah East.

Entrance to the Beulah Cemetery

 

The old Hopetoun Primary School building

The schools are both in Hopetoun - the Primary school scenes at the old Primary School, and the High School photos at the P-12 College.

Hopetoun High School, now  Hopetoun P-12 College

 

Minyip's Club Hotel

There are a few hotels - the 2-storey red-brick Hotel with the rooms upstairs is the Club Hotel in Minyip, previously well-known from when it figured in the Flying Doctors tv-series. The hotel in the Kiewarra street scenes is the Victoria Hotel at Beulah. The interior dining room shots look a lot like the dining room of Royal Mail Hotel in Warracknabeal (unconfirmed).

Victoria Hotel taken from Taverner Street, Beulah

The salt pan or lake where Luke's body is found is the salt depression on the old Pearce land adjacent to the Dimboola-Rainbow road, just where the road has a couple of sweeping bends as it crosses the railway line, north of Jeparit.

The salt lake from the Dimboola-Rainbow Rd

A FilmVictoria video of the making & the locations of 'The Dry'.

Yes - The Dry is on

 In answer to a previous post "Is The Dry on?"  It is a definite yes, with a special screening of the film at the Horsham Centre Cinema today. The closed screening is a Thank you to the local communities who assisted with the filming - as extras, or providing accommodation or catering for the crew.  The film will launch nationally on 1st January 2021.

(Photo - Weekly Advertiser)

Director Robert Connolly said the Wimmera & Southern Mallee provided the perfect setting for the fictional town of Kiewarra, with filming recorded in Beulah, Hopetoun, Jeparit & Minyip, as well as the vast Wimmera landscape.

Location, location

A short film by Matthew Bird has captured a number local iconic locations around the Wimmera and Mallee.
'Parallaxis' is an abstract 16-minute psychological sci-fi film, with 2 'future characters' (played by Ashleigh McLellan and Lilian Steiner) who move across the landscape pushing & controlling large cylindrical instruments that survey & map the terrain.

Bosisto's Eucalyptus Distillery ruins

The terrain in question is recognisable as the site of Bosisto's eucalyptus distillery at Antwerp, the wind farm at Murra Warra, the Stick Shed at Murtoa, and Lake Tyrrell at Sea Lake.

Passageway, Stick Shed

The film follows two augmented humans as they "investigate their possible archaic genealogy in a Wimmera past. Arriving temporarily and somewhat unexpectedly in the now, the inquisitive duo put their surveillance face-halos to work: observing, recording, archiving ephemeral moments and navigational discoveries as they speed through the landscape. Their biomechanically engineered apparatus are cross-fed into the telemetry of the full-body gyrocompass each visitor operates. Systems in systems, wheels within wheels, spin-axis atop spin-axis, each revolution another attempt to locate and momentarily fix a collective bearing in space and time".

Is The Dry on?

There has been more speculation, informed speculation, that the film version of the novel 'The Dry' by Jane Harper will be filmed in the Wimmera.
In December news reports stated that Eric Bana had been in the district scouting for locations.

Movie star Eric Bana dropped into Minyip today for an ice cream and the latest Minyip Show & Shine calendar (from ABC Western Victoria's Facebook page, 7th December)



 "Filmmakes have selected the town's (Minyip) iconic Club Hotel - which featured heavily in 'The Flying Doctors' - as a shooting location...of a film adaptation of author Jane Harper's novel 'The Dry'" (The Weekly Advertiser newspaper 19 December 2018).

Eric Bana is an executive producer for the project, his first role in an Australian film since 2007 with the release of 'Romulus, my father' another book to film drama.

Roll forward to February, and last weekend a casting call went out to Beulah and Minyip for extras for the shooting of "a major film".

The producers did not specify the name of the film, and the media spokespeople for 'The Dry' have refused to divulge filming locations, but as the casting people required 60-70 people for a funeral scene, and as  a funeral sets up the story for 'The Dry' it is reasonable to guess there aren't two funeral films in the offing.

The understanding is the film will be shot around Minyip, Hopetoun, Beulah & Warracknabeal, another tourism boost for Yarriambiack Shire adding to the Silo Art Trail.

Postscript: Yes it happened - check out some of the real locations from the film in this later post "Describing the Dry"

Rup on film at Rup

The film ‘The Farmer’s Cinematheque’ will have a special one-off screening at the Rupanyup Memorial Hall at 2pm on Sunday 9^th October.

‘The Farmer’s Cinematheque’ tells a story that comes from Rupanyup, although it could equally be a story from many other country towns. For more details on the history of the film see this previous post.

There’s a poetic resonance to this event, as the late John Teasdale, creator of most of the archival celluloid interpreted within the film, served many years as the projectionist for the Memorial Hall, in between his farming and his filmmaking. (The Memorial Hall makes a few appearances within the film.)

For information on the film, including a 2 minute teaser, please follow the link.

Admission to the Rupanyup screening costs $5  and includes afternoon tea.

A DVD version of ‘The Farmer’s Cinematheque’ will be launched at the screening, and copies will be available to purchase.

Dressed to make the film

Now that 'The Dressmaker' film has hit the theatres and the DVD has been released, people are looking to see who and what they recognise (refer to earlier post 'Done and dusted' of filming scenes in the Wimmera). Here is a location guide to film settings, with screen shots from the DVD matched to actual places.

Dungatar looking up the hill to Molly's

Dungatar town exteriors - Mt Rothwell near Little River (room interiors - Docklands Studio)

The approach to Jung

Silo - distant views - Jung, except for the CGI superimposed on Mt Rothwell landscape (close-ups - Docklands Studio) 

 << The real Jung silos beside the Melbourne-Adelaide rail-line.

Below - the silos as in the film with Gyton Grantley (playing Barney McSwiney) sitting on the lid of the steel bin.

Jung silos looking west

 Dance exterior - Sailors Home Hall (interior - Williamstown)

Sailors Home Hall with the Blue Ribbon Rd in front

The Sailors Home Hall & toilet block

Molly's burial - Jerro Cemetery

Mourners at the Jerro Cemetery

The Jerro Cemetery, north of Jung on the Greenhills Road

Wedding church - unknown

Longerenong Homestead

Wedding breakfast - Longerenong Homestead

The marquee on the front lawn at the homestead

Side view of the Longerenong Homestead

Winyerp Theatre exterior - Murtoa (interior - Yarraville)

Murtoa's Mechanics Institute Hall

Football match - Jung Recreation Reserve

The massive gums surrounding Jung Rec Reserve

The pavilions at the Jung Rec Reserve

Train - Victorian Goldfields Railway (Muckleford Station and steam locomotive D3 639)

Leaving Muckleford for Maldon

Archival film launch

The library has been involved in the creation of ‘The Farmer’s Cinematheque’ for some time, and now finally the film is born.

John and Relvy Teasdale were farmers in the Wimmera region of north-western Victoria. Over more than fifty years they created a rich and evocative filmic record of working and community life in their particular dry-land farming district of Rupanyup. For John and Relvy, farming and film-making were an inter-related devotional practice. 

Upon his death ten years ago, John Teasdale left a cupboard full of films that reveal and evoke a rich and nourishing terrain. Spanning five decades from the late 1930s to the late 1980s, the Teasdale films offer views into the psychological, social and economic complexities of a wondrous and sophisticated rural world that on the one hand seems to be disappearing but on the other continues to sustain, adapt and recreate itself. 'The Farmer's Cinematheque' exhumes the Teasdale films from the archive and explores their resonance in the context of a world rapidly changing but connected still to a profound legacy of ideas, desires and rituals.

Set against contemporary footage and embellished with story-telling from members of the Teasdale family and the Wimmera community, the film stimulates thinking about the power of memory and the nature of our attachment to particular country, drawing parallels between Indigenous and settler modes of country-keeping and providing elements of revelation and affirmation about rural life. A meditation on the power of country and also a demonstration, quite literally, of the power of film, Combining sequences from the archive with contemporary footage and voices 'The Farmer's Cinematheque' teases out important questions about our custodianship of places and communities in the context of a rapidly changing global environment. It is a lyrical film about the power of memory, the nature of our attachment to country and the ways in which communities strive to balance change and tradition.

‘The Farmer’s Cinematheque’ has its own website, where you can get a sneak peek at the film trailer. The film is a Reckless Eye Production, written and directed by Malcolm McKinnon and Ross Gibson, with cinematography by Ben Speth, produced by Annie Venables, and music by Chris Abrahams.

The world premiere will be at the 2015 Adelaide Film Festival, on 19th October, and importantly its local screening is a free event on 1st November, in Natimuk, part of the Nati Frinj Biennale.

'Combine Nation' 2004 Space and Place

The Nati Frinj Festival is a bi-annual event with an eclectic mix of programs and performances (one of the most notable has been the pictures and lights projected onto the exterior walls of Natimuk’s railway grain silos).

Only in the Wimmera

“The Dressmaker” film, based on Rosalie Ham’s novel, is scheduled for general theatre release on the 29th October. But prior to the general release there will be a special sneak peek screening of “The Dressmaker” film on Thursday 22nd October 2015 as a fund raiser for the Wimmera Health Care Group Friends of the Foundation. 
 The evening begins with a complimentary drink, finger food and entry to the event at 6.30 pm in the Masonic Hall, Urquhart Street, Horsham then, at 7.30 pm, it will be Question and Answer time with the film’s producer Sue Maslin and the author Rosalie Ham, followed by the movie screening at Horsham Centre Cinema in Pynsent Street.

Limited allocated seating tickets for the event at $45 per person, go on sale first thing on Wednesday 30th September at the Wimmera Mail Times Office in Wilson Street.  

the film trailer

Horsham is fortunate to secure the advance screening, as the film’s producer Sue Maslin was committed to screening the movie in Horsham, as the region supported the film-making process - it was partially shot in the Wimmera, and several Wimmera residents scored roles as extras in the film. 
So get set to journey back to the 50s.

Done and dusted

Now that location filming has finished for 'The dressmaker' and all the movie stars have left, we can reflect on some of the scenery which will may appear in the finished product.

Dawn in the Wimmera

Here are some of the pics from the film's Facebook page, including this quote - 
"We're bowled over by the warm welcome we've had in the Wimmera! 
Thank you so much to all of the locals out there."
While in the area the crew filmed at Jung - the Rec Reserve - for the story's football match.
Here are  two different moods on the approach to town.

Then of course there was the wedding scene, shot at Longerenong homestead, what a backdrop!

And after the wedding of course the wedding breakfast. Apparently their inspiration for the wedding dessert table came from Mrs Beeton's famous English cookbook (believe some of the old school fundraiser books would have been great sources, or the Green & Gold and PWMU Cookery Book), and their grandmother's secret recipes.They sent reference photos to the Oven Door Bakery in Horsham and  got this in reply.

As well as the Wimmera, other filming was undertaken at the studios in Docklands in Melbourne, and at Mt Rothwell near Little River.

Visitors to Mt Rothwell

It looks authentic - Molly's house from the Dungatar main street.

That is till you add in the film-crew

Now it is a wait for the editing/production process and release of the film in the middle of 2015.

Dressing the set

Work is progressing on filming for 'The Dressmaker' movie.
Here are a few snaps from the film's Pinterest account - glimpses of on-set life during the creation of the Dressmaker film.

The new & the old - Director Jocelyn Moorhouse and Director of Photography Don McAlpine prepare for the very first shot of the film

Molly's house - erected inside the filming studio

 Capturing the shot - Production Designer, Roger Ford, & director, Jocelyn Moorhouse, in the interior of the Pettyman's house

Looking authentic - the Pettyman's kitchen

Grand opulence - the front room of the Pettyman's house

Author of the book - Rosalie Ham will be at the Horsham Library at 7:30pm on Monday 8th December.

Bookings are essential for this chance to hear from the creator of the story herself - Phone the library on 5382 5707 or drop in to the library before the 5th December.