Les Malheurs de Charles Tait

Synopsis

Les Malheurs de Charles Tait reveals the ravages of time on the print of the film The Story of the Kelly Gang , considered by some to be the first feature-length fiction film in the history of cinema, which Charles Tait shot in 1906. (I use the conditional tense because there is doubt about the film's duration: only fragments survive, and its exact length is unknown.) By selecting and slowing down the most damaged parts of the Australian filmmaker's film, I have managed to create an object with abstract forms and, paradoxically, to breathe new life into a major work of art.