First Feature Film Named To UN Register

By Rich Drees

     June 25, 2007- The surviving seventeen minutes of what is believed to be the first feature-length film has been named to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Memory of the World Register.

     Directed by Australian film exhibitor Charles Tait in 1906, The Story Of The Kelly Gang originally ran 70 minutes and presented a fictionalized portrait of the true-life story of Ned Kelly, an Australian bushranger who has often been compared to America’s old West bandit Billy The Kid. Although only 25 years had past between Kelly’s death and the release of the film, his exploits had taken on an anti-authoritarian status, with the outlaw seen as standing up against corrupt law enforcers. Kelly’s final stand at the Glenrowan Hotel in Victoria, Australia wearing a homemade suit of armor to protect himself from police bullets, has obtained the mythic resonance in Australian culture that the gunfight at the O. K. Corral has in American culture.

     According to the press release, the Memory of the World Register was created in 1992, “with the aim of preserving and digitizing humanity’s documentary heritage. With the support of UNESCO, dozens of archive collections, thousands of meters of film and millions of pages of manuscripts, books or newspapers have been preserved for posterity.”

     Premiering on December 26, The Story Of The Kelly Gang played across Australia into 1907 and made its way to New Zealand, Britain and Ireland in 1908. The film created an immediate sensation and was quickly banned in the Victorian cities of Benalla and Wangaratta where Kelly and his gang had operated. In 1912, it was banned in all of Victoria. Despite these bans the film continued to play in Australia for nearly 20 years in Australia until a mid-1930s restriction on all films about bushrangers forced it to be shelved.

     Long thought totally lost, a small clip of the film was discovered in 1975. Since then, other clips have surfaced, most notably a complete eleven minute reel discovered last year in the National Film and TV Archive in Great Britain. The existing seventeen minutes had been digitally restored last year Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive and screened on the centennial of the film’s initial premier.