Tamworth film, sound archive expanded, refurbished

The volunteers’ working space in Ray Walsh House is now more than double and has new flooring, making for a more comfortable and suitable environment for the regional assets: that’s the archives and the volunteers themselves.

There was a celebratory afternoon tea held this week with volunteers and the tradespeople who performed the work.

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The works were made possible when TRFSA received $7500 through Tamworth Regional Council’s 2017-18 annual donations program in October last year.

The largest single donation made under that program during that financial year, the money was used on new flooring and renovations, a council spokeswoman said.

“Council also took the opportunity to undertake some scheduled maintenance, which included painting and electrical work.”

Vice-president Ian Austin said it had been a painstaking process to prepare for the works.

“We had to move everything out and across the hall,” he said.

“It was a mammoth effort [including] 8000 reels of film.”

Mr Austin said the volunteers had also gained a new compactus for efficient storage.

Another addition to the archive’s tools has been a RetroScan HD film scanner.

“It’s one of only a couple in Australia and allows us to copy movie film frame by frame,” Mr Austin said.

“All that film has been viewed and catalogued … and that’s taken the last 20 years to do that, so we’ve probably got 20 years to digitise it for people and produce it in high definition as the media needs today.”

A glimpse at just three of the items in the Tamworth Regional Film and Sound Archive show the facility’s range and importance, says vice-president Ian Austin.

Mr Austin said the nine or so volunteers who turned out every Tuesday could be handling historical treasures related to world events, local venues and family videos.

“We’ve just had a couple come in here with 90-year-old film to have digitised,” Mr Austin said.

“Their father was a chemist in Inverell; he filmed Forster and Inverell, and they brought it in in one of those big chemist jars.

“It had almost turned to vinegar, like film does when it gets really old – we took the lid off the jar and it nearly blows your head off.

“The colour had bleached out a bit, but other than that I think we’ll be able to work with it.”

Mr Austin said an elderly couple who had visited an open day last year “sat in our row of theatre seats and said: ‘We sat in these chairs when we were courting’.”

Then there are the WWI slides displayed in the Spirit of Anzac Centenary Experience at TRECC two years ago.

“Ison’s theatre where the [new CH on Peel hotel] is being built used to show them in World War I to encourage people to join up [and] after the war they were given to the RSL,” he said.

“Ninety years later, they were found and made their way to us … We’ve digitised them all, we’ve researched them all, we’ve contacted families and schools and they’ve researched them, so that’s one of our treasures.”