Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Anzac Day Promotional (c.1916)

Synopsis

This silent, black-and-white cinema advertisement was used to encourage Australians to commemorate Anzac Day. It shows a re-enactment of soldiers wearing gas masks walking through some trenches with their rifles and ends with a title card that says ‘A nation’s manhood is straining at its task of carving Anzac Day deep-cut in the calendar of time’.

Curator’s notes

by Elizabeth Taggart-Speers

Anzac Day and the Anzac legend has become a significant part of Australia’s national identity. Today, ceremonies on 25 April throughout Australia and the world commemorate the Gallipoli campaign and those that have subsequently served Australia in military operations. Thousands of Australians make the journey to the shores of Gallipoli in Turkey each year to mark this day.

Writers, artists and historians have often explored the connection Australians have with Gallipoli and in doing so have etched the Gallipoli legend deeper into Australia’s psyche. Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli portrays the Battle of Gallipoli and its effect on Australia’s identity, particularly with regard to mateship and the concept of duty and honour.

Anzac Day Promotional is just one of the films held in the Roger McKenzie Collection at the NFSA. Over a number of years, filmmaker and producer Roger McKenzie, along with film projectionist and friend Bernie Kent, built a large private film collection which contained newsreels, sporting events, transport footage, short pieces of early tinted film, adverstisements and documentaries. They also made their own home movies. Like many film lovers who were also collectors, McKenzie and Kent have contributed to the rich historical record that moving images provide by donating their collection to the National Film and Sound Archive.

Two examples of Kent and McKenzie’s home movies have also been curated on the site. They are McKenzie, Roger and Kent, Bernie: Around Sydney with a Camera and McKenzie, Roger and Kent, Bernie: Silent Car Trip Australia.

This advertisement was most likely to have been produced between 1916 and 1920. The Gallipoli campaign was fought from 25 April 1915 and first commemorated in 1916.