Magic Moments: Contextualising Cinema Advertising Slides from the Queensland Museum Collection

Abstract

The Queensland Museum's eclectic State Collection holds an extensive range of photographic and moving image equipment, as well as a collection of slides and photographs that tells all manner of stories about the history of Queensland. This collection goes back to the earliest technologies, such as daguerreotypes and hand-drawn magic lantern slides, and extends through to a digital image repository. Included in this collection are two captivating series of cinema advertising slides used at the Wintergarden cinemas in Maryborough and Ipswich during the 1940s and 1950s. These slides simultaneously illuminate a history of entertainment and cinema-going, a history of image technologies and the histories of the advertised products and events pertinent to regional Queenslanders at this time.