2006 has been somewhat of a vintage year for Australian film, with home-grown produce such as ‘Kenny’, ‘Suburban Mayhem’ and ‘Jindabyne’ achieving critical and, unusually, financial success in cinemas. Film Finance Corporation executive director Brian Rosen anticipates that Australian films are even likely to increase their box-office takings in the next few years – significantly so . It would appear that the Australian film – in a commercial sense at least – has been given a new lease on life.

It’s a fitting coincidence then, that 2006 also marks the centenary of Australia’s most significant contribution to cinema during the medium’s infancy. Released on Boxing Day in 1906, ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang’ is considered as a pioneering film from not just a technical standpoint, but a temporal one as well. With an hour-long runtime, the film was more than six times the average length of its contemporaries; despite this breach of convention, ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang’ was enormously successful, being screened all over Australia, and exported to New Zealand and the UK. It is commonly regarded as the first feature-length movie ever produced.

Even with international popularity and acclaim, the film’s stock eventually disappeared, and it was not until the late 1970s that the first slivers of footage began to resurface. Slowly, from a number of disparate sources, the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) began to piece the film together, with the most significant length of film only being discovered in the UK earlier this year. Even so, what existed of ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang’ was only 18 minutes of original footage, much of which had been badly damaged during its period of exile. The NFSA undertook to digitally restore what they had compiled in time to commemorate its’ 100th birthday, and present a whole new generation of Australians with the most complete and unblemished version possible of an important part of their artistic heritage.

Despite its age, the archive’s director Paolo Cherchi-Usai has asked that ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang’ not be treated “with condescension, or as a piece of nostalgia. A 1906 film can contribute to the development of audio-visual culture today.” Accordingly, the NFSA approached electronic musician Endorphin “to provide his interpretation of this key film”. The choice of a contemporary artist to accompany ‘The Story of the Kelly Gan’g, Cherchi-Usai explained, would act as “a bridge between 1906 and 2006,” and would ultimately recognise that “the National Film Archive (sic) exists in order to foster creativity in all its forms.”

The NFSA chose Thursday November 30 as the evening to preview the restored ‘Story of the Kelly Gang’ to the world, with an outdoor screening on the archive’s front lawns in Acton. A thick cover of grey clouds had gathered in the afternoon, which in 1906 may have signified the advent of rain, but in present-day Canberra it’s the meteorological equivalent of MDMA-friendship: it feels real for awhile, but thinking it actually means anything is purely delusional. By the time proceedings began, the weather had kindly cleared anyway, leaving the ample-sized crowd to picnic peacefully on the grass as the sun gradually set. The NFSA had spared no expense for this occasion, erecting a large temporary screen on the lawns, and positioning a stage beneath it. With a piano to one side of the screen, and a set of laptops and samplers on the other, the setup was in itself a preview of the historical disparities which would characterise the evening’s entertainment.

With the sun having set completely by 8:45pm – a little later than expected – archive director Cherchi-Usai strode onto the stage and explained to the crowd that, by using screening technology and techniques from the period, “we will basically reproduce the experience of going to the movies in 1906”, the aim being to put the audience in the mindset of an early 20th Century cinemagoer.
To complement the evening’s historical milieu, a series of five short films from the era were first aired, accompanied by renowned international pianist Mauro Colombis. The Italian-born musician has carved an obscure niche for himself by specialising in the live scoring of silent films, and his expertise showed, with the sequence of shorts being given an extra emotional dimension by his subtle piano score.

With a context now firmly established, Cherchi-Usai spoke to the crowd once again, recounting ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang’s’ turbulent history, and subsequent refurbishment process. It was a project which clearly brought him, as well as the archive on the whole, a great deal of pride. “What you are about to see is a group of fragments,” he explained, “but it’s more than anybody else has ever seen so far. Eighteen minutes of a cultural Australian treasure.” The archive director welcomed Endorphin to the stage, and the evening’s centrepiece rolled onto the screen.

Endorphin is an extremely talented producer, but the task of cohesively melding sounds with images that are a century apart was never going to be an easy one. And initially, the combination of an Ableton-powered musical style with such a historical film was jarring, a stark contrast to the more traditional piano score that Mauro Colombis had earlier performed. In the short runtime, Endorphin covered a wide range of styles within the electronic spectrum, with a varying tempo to match the on-screen action. However, as the fragmented Story of the Kelly Gang sped disjointedly through its narrative, it became clear that Endorphin had managed to craft a modern soundtrack that still sat comfortably alongside the antique piece of cinema, effectively forming the 1906-2006 bridge that the NFSA had been seeking. Once the film had concluded, he played through a short preview of songs from his forthcoming artist album, and then joined his young family in the crowd.

When asked about his collaboration with the NFSA on The Story of the Kelly Gang, Endorphin (real name Eric Chapus) recounts: “The brief was to do whatever I wanted [with the score], as long as it was controversial.” The institution’s flexible approach to the project impressed the musician, and he is quick to lend praise. “I thought it was a very bold move from them,” he says. “They really want to bring the archive alive.”

He confesses to never having seen the 1906 version of the Ned Kelly story before undertaking the project – it was only when the NFSA sent him the original footage in September that he first experienced the classic film. And initially, Chapus was unsure of how to put his music to it. “Dance music tends to age very quickly,” he explains. “That was my main concern.” From this emerged a goal of producing a score which not only fit the film itself, but could also emulate its’ longevity: “Something that can be still relevant in a few years’ time”. The key to such longevity, Chapus feels, lies in a wide musical appeal, not just to dance music listeners. “I was trying not to loophole myself…that’s why I used guitars and sounds that can be appreciated by a broader audience.”

Another difficulty in scoring the film was the fractures in its narrative, with many scenes missing altogether or lasting only a few seconds. “There’s a lot of gaps, a lot of black between shots,” Chapus acknowledges, and in the end he felt the best treatment would be to try and “take the viewers into a trip, a journey” and disregard the gaps entirely. Chapus was concerned at how this musical take on the film would be received by the NFSA. “It was really nerve-wracking, and I wasn’t quite sure whether I’d pulled it off or not, but they were really happy.”

The Endorphin soundtrack will also accompany the restored Story of the Kelly Gang when it is released on DVD next year, but given the success of this undertaking, further collaborations with the NFSA seem inevitable. “We’re already talking about a much bigger project,” hints Chapus. “Something a lot more avant garde.”

It’s hard to imagine a project more avant garde than putting an electronic music score to a hundred year old film, but whatever the outcome might be, it’s reassuring to know that an important institution like the Film & Sound Archive is doing more to preserve the cultural heritage of this country than just lock it away in a climatically-controlled room.