The Australian Museum of Moving Picture and Television, Western Region, will present a program of films and videos from its collection which illustrates aspects of Perth’s cultural heritage.The rare vintage film material was originally published in the decades from the early 1950’s through to the 1980’s as part of Western Australian Government immigration, informational, educational and tourism strategies.The digital material covers some similar ground and also a variety of television material that illustrates Perth’s growing and vibrant cultural history from the early days of Perth television until quite recently.We can relive the era of the big dance studios in Perth with Channel Seven’s “Invitation to The Dance”, which was produced and directed by Brian Williams, with Sam Gilkison as his associate producer. This 1963 one-off special involved the Perth dance studios and dance community at that time. The prominent ballroom dance studios were the Gilkison and the Wrightson dance studios.This program marked a point in TVW’s history with the opening of Studio 1 in 1963. Its a musical documentary on 400 years of dance up until Rock ‘n RolI, and was the first program made in that studio. The show utilised a vast number of dancers from all Perth dance studios, with everyone dressed in the costumes of each era. It is probably something that would be too expensive to try today? Prior to that, the studio was used as a garage for Seven’s first outside broadcast van, leading up to the 1962 Perth Commonwealth and Empire Games.Another Seven program being screened is the 1992 colour documentary of Susannah Carr in the Genevieve 500 – a history making road race from Perth to Albany. The car was the twin-cylinder 10/12 hp Darracq built in Paris in 1904, that was made famous in the 1953 British comedy film, named “Genevieve”, starring Kenneth More and Kay Kendall.To finally mark the end of Seven’s Studio 1 and the whole television complex at Tuart Hill, there will be the Richard Ashton video shows the presenting of the last News from that site. This gives a rare behind the scenes glimpse of what happens on the studio floor and in the control rooms as the program goes to air.
