Charles Tait

Birth : 1868-11-15, Victoria, Australia

Death : 1933-06-27

History

Though among the more obscure figures in Australian history, Charles Tait has a claim to eternal fame in the history of filmmaking - in 1906, he directed the first feature-length narrative film, The Story of the Kelley Gang, of which only a small portion survives. Tait and his brothers were theatre entrepreneurs at the turn of the century.

Profile

Movies

The Story of the Kelly Gang

Director

Just as Galeen and Wegener's Der Golem (1915) can be seen as a testament to early German film artistry, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) symbolizes both the birth of the Australian film industry and the emergence of an Australian cinema identity. Even more significantly, it heralds the emergence of the feature film format. However, only fragments of the original production of more than one hour are known to exist, preserved at the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra; Efforts at reconstruction have made the film available to modern audiences.