[John Anderson Home Movies: Reel 19]

John Robert (Jack) Anderson (1924–1993) was a film distributor, cinema owner and photographer as well as an enthusiastic filmmaker in and around Ballarat in Victoria. Jack developed an interest in film very early at cinema shows and gained his first film experience while serving in WWII, photographing wartime conditions and aircraft involved in the defence of Australia’s north, including the aftermath of the Darwin bombing raid.

It was whilst working in photographic studios that Jack met his future wife, business partner and fellow film enthusiast Marie Bourke. Starting out by hiring films and showing them around regional Victoria, Jack and Marie established cinemas such as the Astor Cinema in Ararat, Bell Post Hill Drive-In in Geelong and the Southern and Northern Drive-Ins and Vegas 70 Cinema in Ballarat. In the 1970s, the Anderson family acquired and restored the Regent Theatre in Ballarat which would then become the first multiplex in regional Victoria.

Along the way, Jack filmed his family and friends activities and outings, horse racing, Ballarat street scenes, motorcycle scrambling and travel scenes on the road – an unusual and wonderful look at life in regional Victoria during the 1940s to the 1960s.

This film presents surburban family life in country Victoria along with holiday footage in and around a developing Canberra in the 1950s. It includes some shots of the Prime Minister’s residence, The Lodge.

This film was originally made using 16mm film.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:27:00 1940s women’s fashion
00:02:09:00 shot of a typical post-war suburban weatherboard home with car in the driveway
00:06:10:00 Christmas with children and their gifts and toys
00:16:10:00 shots from a military air show
00:20:33:00 shot of lounge room and television
00:24:13:00 aerial shots of Ballarat including the drive-in cinema
00:33:33:00 exterior footage of the Lodge and shot of Canberra developing
00:33:16:00 young girl using an old camera over looking a landscape
00:34:34:00 MLC building plaza and surrounds in Canberra
00:35:08:00 shot of old Parliament house
00:35:15:00 shot of the war memorial