Sunday 16 March 2025, 2pm:
A ‘crime against society’: the contested birth of the National Film and Sound Archive
Webinar, Ray Edmondson
In 1988, four years after its creation, former National Library Director-General Harrison Bryan was still raging about the NFSA’s separation from the Library, claiming it had ‘all the characteristics of rape: the cynicism, the utter lack of scruple and the plain treachery that accompanied that particular crime against society”. The assertion that underhanded ‘sectional interests’ were behind the NFSA’s creation for their own benefit was by then set in corporate mythology. Was Bryan right? The Library vigorously opposed the Hawke government’s sympathy for a new kind of institution to manage the nation’s audiovisual heritage.
Ray Edmondson will reprise, on Powerpoint, his presentation at the conference of the Australian Historical Association on 3 July 2024. He reviews what happened during a campaign that reached fever pitch in Parliament and the media in late 1983, the climax of a decades-long saga during which the film, television and sound recording communities expressed ever-mounting concern about the National Library’s perceived neglect. In the NFSA’s 40th anniversary year, it is timely to revisit an institutional and political drama of advocacy, ethics and loyalty. How does a memory institution engage in truth-telling?
As a prelude, read Ray’s recent article on Inside Story https://insidestory.org.au/barry-cohens-mistake-turns-forty/
The webinar is free but bookings are essential BOOK HERE