Via Australia's ABC:This evening — right now, in Australia, it would be "last night" — Canberra audiences watched a restored portion of what is reportedly the world's first feature-length narrative film, the 1906 Australian production The Story of the Kelly Gang.
Shot on location outside Melbourne, Charles Tait's* 60-minute "Bushranger" — the Australian Western — focuses on the deeds of iconic outlaw Ned Kelly (1855–1880).
Once thought completely lost, 18 minutes of The Story of the Kelly Gang have been pieced together by the National Film and Sound Archive, with the assistance of Dutch digital restoration experts.
"The sequences that came to us were fairly vague and flickery and milky in its [sic] quality and the digital enhancement of that image has made it live and sparkle," said the archive's senior curator Graham Shirley, adding that "frames that were damaged, individual frames that might have only had half an image, are now complete frames."
According to Shirley, The Story of the Kelly Gang sparked the Bushranger genre and lengthier running times, thus laying the foundation for the local film industry.
For the Canberra screening, the traditional piano music score has been replaced by Endorphin's electronic dance music.
In 2003, Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, and Naomi Watts starred in Ned Kelly. Greeted by mixed reviews, this socially and politically conscious version of Kelly's life was directed by Gregor Jordan from a screenplay by John M. McDonagh, adapted from Robert Drewe's novel Our Sunshine.
* Others may have had a hand in the direction, including other members of the Tait family.
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