LIGHT YEARS - now re-mastered from original film negatives
18 December 2023
LIGHT YEARS – a film about the life and work of Olive Cotton, the legendary Australian photographer with a portfolio spanning sixty years. Superbly re-mastered from the original film negatives, the film has never looked better.
Made in 1990 by Kathryn Millard, the film incorporates invaluable on-screen conversations with Olive Cotton talking about her work.
AVAILABLE NOW iN A SUPERB 1080p FILE FOR SCREENINGS, AND ON DVD AND VIMEO-ON-DEMAND: for details, links and orders see www.roninfilms.com.au/video/15661/0/430.html
In the 1930s and 1940s, Olive Cotton successfully ran a photographic studio in Sydney with the renowned Max Dupain. Her work was exhibited both in Australia and overseas. At the end of the war, she married and moved to central New South Wales to live on the land and raise a family. For many years without running water or electricity, she continued to take photographs but was unable to print them. Her negatives were carefully stored in an old sea trunk until the 1960s. It was at this time that her friends and family built a darkroom in Cowra. In the early 1980s she resumed exhibiting to critical and public acclaim and was able to devote much of her time to printing from her vast personal archive of negatives.
Narrator GILLIAN JONES
Written and Directed by KATHRYN MILLARD
Produced by KATHRYN MILLARD and PATRICIA L'HUEDE
Cinematographer JOHN WHITTERON
Editor TONY STEVENS
Sound Recordist LEO SULLIVAN
Music composed by RICHARD VELLA
Sound Designers JOHN DENNISON and TONY VACCHER