Film Collection Online: The Department of Information Second World War films

To complement the release of the film collection online, the film and sound team are creating a series of highlight reels to give you a taste of the material that is now readily available at your finger tips!

The Department of Information (DOI) was established at the commencement of the Second World  War and employed cinematographers Damien Parer, Frank Hurley,  Frank Bagnall and Bill Carty - to name a few.  Their brief was to shoot material of a propagandistic nature for the production of newsreels and shorts to be screened back home in Australia. The finished works were produced by Cinesound, Movietone and the DOI itself. The Memorial’s film collection holds both a large amount of unedited original footage and a number of the finished newsreels and short films. This showreel highlights the range of content and visual style available in the DOI collection, and has been edited together in the spirit of the cinematographers of the time.

Please enjoy exploring, researching and, most importantly, viewing our collection.

Links to collection items used in the showreel – F01079, F01260, F01424, F01240, F01825, F01310, F01866

Our previous showreel can be found here – First World War