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Want to sample some of the remarkable material in the Screen Australia Library? These pre-selected searches offer just a few highlights.
Or you can search the collection for yourself.

Curious to see what Film Australia looked like in the 1960s? The opening sequence from From the Tropics to the Snow features the building in all its glory, although these days the staff drive somewhat more sedately. The film itself is a classic: an amusing look at the filmmaking process and the dilemma of how to market Australia to viewers.

Know Your Children is a 1950s study of juvenile delinquency, made as an adult education film for the Department of Information. The black-and-white footage of inner city living is stunning, and it’s fascinating to compare both the style and the message to contemporary media portrayals.

Filmed between 1947 and 1971, the Australian Diary and Australian Colour Diary series records how Australians have lived, worked and played over the years. Each of these short films gives a snapshot of life at the time, providing a picture of a proud, diverse, idiosyncratic and constantly changing nation. Informative, entertaining and often amusing, the subjects range from serious to quirky and cover everything from innovations in agriculture, industry and science to sport, art, education, fashion, flora and fauna.

In an era where we can watch preview clips online, it's fascinating to look back at cutting-edge technology as it was then: the wonders of telegraph communications in the 1930s, doing schoolwork by correspondence in the 1940s and the coming of electricity to a country town in the 1950s. Those were the days when kids delivered our news on their paper runs, milkmen brought bottles to our doors, firemen kept a record of all their calls in a big logbook and police phoned the station from a special police callbox on the street.