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Collection of Fox Feature Films  27 November 1975

enlarge imageCollection of Fox Feature Films
27 November 1975
photograph
Film Collection

 

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.

Selection of items from the Paradise Possessed Exhibition 1998

enlarge imageSelection of items from the Paradise Possessed Exhibition 1998
Poster
Exhibitions Collection

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 1788–1830 (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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