ABSTRACT
In 1995 I was made aware of 25 hours of film footage, mostly ceremonial material shot by T.G.H. Strehlow between 1935 and 1975. Despite few people having ever accessed this material, the Board of the Strehlow Research Centre (SRC) gave me exclusive access to develop a catalogue to the film collection. This chapter will document my approach to the digitization of a rare ethnographic film collection as a basis for cataloguing and further understanding the cultural import of the films. Using T.G.H. Strehlow’s written resources, the films’ relationships to Aboriginal ceremonial traditions contribute to the preservation of cultural memory. While embarking on this digitization and cataloguing project, I completed a documentary for Australian public television (Special Broadcasting System—SBS) titled, Mr Strehlow#8217;s Films (Cohen, 2001). The following chapter will tie the research and oral testimony from this documentary to the importance of Strehlow’s films as a key feature of the digital media additions to the archive.
