I’m excited to share my new score and sound design for The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), created as part of Documentaries Rescored, a project commissioned by the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. Widely recognised as the world’s first feature-length narrative film, this remarkable piece of Australian screen history survives only in fragments, with footage supplied by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Creating a contemporary soundtrack for the film was an opportunity to explore how music and sound can help reconnect audiences with archival cinema, giving emotional shape, momentum and atmosphere to images from another era.

The project will screen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival’s Screen Talk Evening at Henkel Street Cinemas, alongside my recorded 30-minute presentation and masterclass. In the presentation, I explore how composition can transform narrative meaning, deepen emotion and reinterpret historical film through contemporary sound design. Scoring a fragmented silent film brings unique creative challenges, from clarifying story structure to building tension without dialogue or production sound. My aim was to honour the film’s place in history while creating a cinematic experience that feels alive, immediate and emotionally engaging for modern audiences.