Les Malheurs de Charles Tait

Directed by Gérard Courant

Les Malheurs de Charles Tait reveals the ravages of time on the print of the film The Story of the Kelly Gang , considered by some to be the first feature-length fiction film in the history of cinema, which Charles Tait shot in 1906. (I use the conditional tense because there is doubt about the film's duration: only fragments survive, and its exact length is unknown.) By selecting and slowing down the most damaged parts of the Australian filmmaker's film, I have managed to create an object with abstract forms and, paradoxically, to breathe new life into a major work of art.