St Kilda Esplanade

In this clip, the camera remains mostly static, like some of the subjects in the film. At this time, people were not familiar with moving image and often posed for the camera like they were posing for a photograph or portrait. The last shot looks similar to that of a Seurat painting with its geometric form and structure.

Title Synopsis

This short piece of actuality footage shows people at St Kilda in 1914, including at the entrance to Luna Park, Daylight Pictures Cinema and a jetty at the beach.

Title Curator's Notes

Although this film is identified as a piece of actuality footage, the people being photographed may have been aware of the camera. In fact, they look like they have dressed for the occasion and some scenes look staged.

As mentioned, this clip includes footage of Daylight Pictures, an outdoor cinema that used ‘Daylight screen lantern slides or moving pictures … projected through darkness by covering the projector with a dark cloth’ (Ina Bertrand in Cinema in Australia, A Documentary History, p16).

This provided the outdoor exhibitor with longer opening hours and it also answered the moralist belief that ‘unseemly advances were being made under cover of the darkened cinema’ (see Cinema in Australia, A Documentary History, p16).