National Film and Sound Archive

The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) is Australia’s audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national collection of audiovisual materials and related items. The collection ranges from works created in the late nineteenth century when the recorded sound and film industries were in their infancy to those made in the present day.

As an institution, the Archive had a checkered history from its first incarnation in 1935 as the National Historical Film and Speaking Record Library (within the then Commonwealth National Library) to its becoming an independent statutory authority as the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia in 2008.

The National Collection includes more than 1.6 million items. In addition to discs, films, videos, audio tapes, phonograph cylinders and wire recordings, the Collection includes supporting documents and artefacts, such as photographic stills, transparencies, posters, lobby cards, publicity, scripts, costumes, props, memorabilia and sound, video and film equipment.

Notable items from the collection include:

- The Cinesound Movietone Australian Newsreel Collection, 1929-1975: comprehensive collection of 4,000 newsreel films and documentaries representing news stories covering all major events in Australian history, sport and entertainment from 1929 to 1975. Inscribed on the Australian Memory of the World Register in 2003.

- The Story of the Kelly Gang, 1906: directed by Charles Tait, is the first full-length narrative feature film produced anywhere in the world, and was inscribed onto the International Memory of the World Register in 2007.

Text source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Film_and_Sound_Archive#Collections
Photo source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National_Film_and_Sound_Archive.jpg

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