Andrew Best on Recreating lost scenes in Charles Chauvel’s The Moth of Moonbi
Webinar, was on Sunday 19 May at 2pm. The recording is here.
Director Charles Chauvel is best known for landmark films like Forty Thousand Horsemen (1941) and Jedda (1954), but he began his career during the silent era with The Moth of Moonbi in 1926. It was the first feature length drama produced in Queensland, but less than half of the film survives today. It follows the fortunes of Dell Ferris, a country girl drawn to the bright lights of the city.
Researcher and filmmaker Andrew Best has embarked on a highly unusual project. As part of his doctoral research, he is recreating missing scenes from the film, with new actors, to restore the film’s narrative. In this webinar Andrew will discuss his project, covering the recreation process, and highlighting the potential of such recreations to provide valuable insight into lost films and enhance public engagement with forgotten chapters of Australia's cinematic history.
We suggest you look at these two sequences from his project, prior to the webinar:
Webinar, was on Sunday 19 May at 2pm. The recording is here.
Director Charles Chauvel is best known for landmark films like Forty Thousand Horsemen (1941) and Jedda (1954), but he began his career during the silent era with The Moth of Moonbi in 1926. It was the first feature length drama produced in Queensland, but less than half of the film survives today. It follows the fortunes of Dell Ferris, a country girl drawn to the bright lights of the city.
Researcher and filmmaker Andrew Best has embarked on a highly unusual project. As part of his doctoral research, he is recreating missing scenes from the film, with new actors, to restore the film’s narrative. In this webinar Andrew will discuss his project, covering the recreation process, and highlighting the potential of such recreations to provide valuable insight into lost films and enhance public engagement with forgotten chapters of Australia's cinematic history.
We suggest you look at these two sequences from his project, prior to the webinar:
- The final minutes of surviving footage from The Moth of Moonbi; and
- Andrew’s recreation of the missing ending of the film, using speculative approaches based on surviving historical material from the original film.
