Share
Clip description
The preacher offers an interpretation of one of the parables from the Bible. This clip is from a black-and-white live broadcast of a Catholic church service in the Mary Magdalene Roman Catholic Church in Rose Bay, Sydney.
Curator’s notes
We’re listening to the sermon as though we are part of the congregation. There are no obvious changes to accommodate the presence of the television cameras. It’s hardly compelling viewing. The preacher is no orator and makes few concessions for the comprehension of ordinary folk. Nevertheless, it is typical of thousands of church services taking place all over Australia in the 1960s.
The low contrast picture, full of mid greys, was standard television picture quality at the time. Television cameras required enormously high voltage lighting to get an acceptable picture, and this would have been very hard to achieve away from the resources of a studio.
Divine Service was first broadcast from St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in 1956, the year of the Melbourne Olympics and the first year of television broadcasting in Australia. Regular weekly broadcasts of church services all over Australia did not start until 1964.
