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NFSA/SFF to search for lost Cecil Holmes film

Captain ThunderboltThe National Film and Sound Archive and the Sydney Film Festival are planning to launch a search for the 1953 film Captain Thunderbolt, the first feature directed by Cecil Holmes.

“We’re delighted to have a partnership with the NFSA around this search,” festival director Clare Stewart told Encore.

The NFSA and the SFF are working to find a copy of the film based on the life of Frederick Wordsworth Ward, the NSW bushranger known as Captain Thunderbolt.

“It’s not preserved in our archives. We don’t have a 35mm copy of the film; we have a very bad 16mm copy that is not complete , and a very bad VHS copy,” said NFSA national programs manager Jane Cruickshank.

Stewart added that she’s an admirer of Holmes’ work [“an extremely significant figure in Australian filmmaking”], and therefore it is “very frustrating that there is no 35mm of Captain Thunderbolt“.

The search is expected to be officially announced on May 7 when the SFF program is launched. It comes off the back of the premiere of the digitally-restored 1971 film Wake in Fright during last year’s festival.

Wake in Fright was a very significant case, proving how long a search like this can go on for and what it can take to find the elements to be able to do a restoration of that kind,” explained Stewart.

Writing for The Sunday Herald on April 8, 1951, Max Brown said about Captain Thunderbolt:

“Australia, despite her [television ] lag compared with Britain and America, is making a good start in a connected field: films for television. Our first feature, Captain Thunderbolt will soon be finished in Sydney. It is intended for the overseas markets

“If Captain Thunderbolt, which presents a real Australian subject, is a success it will give a badly needed boost to Australia’s ailing film industry. Success would pave the way for the production of at least four television films a year in Australia.”

The film reportedly cost £15,000, “one sixtieth of the amount the Kangaroo unit from Hollywood is spending on a film of a somewhat greater length”, according to Brown’s set visit report.

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