David and Margaret - Graham Shirley investigates retrieving the legacy after the ABC's removal of their decade long contribution

Michelle Guthrie, CEO of the ABC

Editor’s Note: The note below from film-maker, consultant, researcher and oral historian Graham Shirley responds to the earlier post about the ABC’s decision to take down ten years of movie reviews by Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton delivered on air during the period in which they presented At the Movies on ABC-TV. The previous post, which has a link to the full story published online by The Daily Review, can be found if you click here   

Graham writes: Speaking of the National Library of Australia’s (NLA) online research facility Trove, I thought I’d see if the 2004-2014 run of At the Movies reviews and interviews have been archived by NLA’s long-term initiative, PANDORA: Australia’s Web Archive.  It turns out that it has been, as web-searchers will find when they reach this page:

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/148512

Initially I thought that only the episodes of 17 Sep and 18 Dec 2014 had been archived. But if the searcher clicks on the left-hand headings that include ‘Movie Reviews’, ‘Interviews’, ‘The Classic’ etc, they will find a 2004-2014 timeline materialises along the top of the page. By exploring the individual air dates for every episode within the chosen year, they will be able to reach reviews of individual films and text for many (but not all of the) interviews. Unfortunately, the video links originally provided for interviews no longer lead to anything other than a page saying they’re unplayable – especially regrettable when the At the Movies page for the interviews reads, ‘web only’, which means no transcript and no other info about what the interview contained.

PANDORA has also archived what is now – or most recently – called ‘SBS Films: Formerly The Movie Show’, and it was most recently archived by PANDORA on 25 Feb 2013 -

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/24215

When I started to explore ‘SBS Films: Formerly The Movie Show’, I found the PANDORA process had somehow made access somewhat arthritic, and once-upon-a-time links to trailers and video interviews now seem unplayable.  Others with more time than me at the moment may want to find out a bit more about what ‘SBS Films: Formerly The Movie Show’ does contain.

Finally, by clicking the second link below, the web-searcher will find a list of dates on which what is now called ‘SBS Films: Formerly The Movie Show’ was archived.  By clicking onto the ‘Archived’ entries for 2002 to 2008, they will find links to specific The Movie Show reviews for those years.  For the years 2009 to 2013, there are still reviews, but under a more anonymous ‘SBS Film’ badging.

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/24215