Event
Puffs of Smoke : Live musical performance by composer Phillip Johnston accompanying short Australian silent films
- Date: Saturday, 30 May 2026, 7:00pm
- Venue: National Film & Sound Archive — McCoy Circuit, Acton, ACT
- Tickets: Adults: 35 | Concession: 25 (+ booking fee) — Tickets can be purchased online
Event Details
Drawing on a decades-long international career, composer and saxophonist Phillip Johnston brings 100-year-old silent films from the NFSA Collection vividly to life with his dynamic live scores.
Puffs of Smoke is a live musical performance featuring a program of short silent films, mostly from before 1920, accompanied by live music composed and performed by Phillip Johnston. Interspersed with these films are short narratives that together create a fantasia exploring the little-known history of the Australian silent film era.
These films combine a variety of techniques, subjects and styles, including dramatised poems, newsreel footage, fragments of bushranger melodramas, advertisements and short documentaries. The program also includes magic lantern slides from the Salvation Army’s proto-multimedia event Soldiers of the Cross (1900).
This performance includes short films and other excerpts from the NFSA collection.
Further information for this event is available online at the event's website
Featured artists
- Music of Phillip Johnston
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