This Sunday at 7pm, the 18^th February, there will be an exciting talk by visiting author, Professor Julie Allen. The event is at the Kitchen Gallery, Broken Hill Art Exchange, 313 Argent Street.

Silver City is a well-known for its long history of film production, particularly from the 1950s (think of Wake in Fright), and for an equally long history of developing cinema theatres, But less is known of our history in circulating and even producing early silent film here.

So Professor Allen’s visit is something of a special privilege. She will be discussing Broken Hill’s early 20th century cinema culture and how the European silent film scene intersected with our town’s growing and diverse population, shaping our sense of cultural identity.

Julie notes that so far she has “done all her research remotely, either from the US, where I live, or from Canberra/Sydney/Melbourne/Adelaide, where I’ve worked in the archives—so I’m very excited about this visit.”

She also says: “In addition to telling people about the interesting stories I found in my research for the book, I’m working on two related articles–one is about travelling cinemas in the Outback, and the other about the Australian reception of the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen.”

Julie Allen is currently a Professor of Comparative Arts and Letters at Brigham Young University, USA.

Her book is titled Screening Europe in Australasia: Transnational Silent Film before and after the Rise of Hollywood and is published by the University of Exeter Press, UK.

Exeter University Press has what it calls an Open Access policy whereby interested readers and scholars can download a copy of a book as a PDF, without payment.

Professor Allen’s book is available here.

And the downloadable PDF is here.