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Collection
of Fox Feature Films
27 November 1975
photograph
Film Collection
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Another
means of sharing the Collection with the public was through the display
of the film collection. Throughout the 1970s until the establishment
of ScreenSound Australia (formerly the National Film and Sound Archive)
in 1984, the Library’s public film program greatly enriched Canberra’s
cultural life. The eclectic nature of the films shown, as well as the
significant factor that the public did not pay to see the films, reflected
the Library’s changing policy of reaching out with its Collection to as
broad a public as possible. Children’s films, early Australian films of
historical significance, cult horror flicks such as Cat People,
Hollywood classics The Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Power and Swing
Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, art-house and new-wave feminism
were all shown. The film sessions were able to generate a radically new
and diverse audience for the Library beyond scholars and researchers.
The Library was also enriching Canberra’s cultural life.
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Selection
of items from the Paradise Possessed Exhibition 1998
Poster
Exhibitions Collection
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The
late 1980s were to give new impetus to the Library’s exhibition program.
The Library had been running exhibitions since the early days of the Parliamentary
Library in Melbourne, yet the establishment of a section devoted to the
curating and implementing of exhibitions brought with it a new level of
professionalism. The first exhibition displayed by the new section was
People, Print and Paper (1988). This has been followed consistently
by other important exhibitions such as Paradise Possessed: The Rex
Nan Kivell Collection (1998) and The World Upside Down: Australia
17881830 (2000), all drawing on the Library's Collection. In
2001 the Library plans one of its most ambitious exhibitions to date,
Treasures from the World’s Great Libraries. Generously lent from
the collections of many of the world’s most impressive libraries, some
of the highlights of the exhibition are one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a
Gutenburg Bible, and an Albert Einstein manuscript.
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