the JOHN HARDING

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Deadly sea snake 150km offshore in The Swain Reefs

Cinemateque is popular in Sydney where recorded music is played during a re-release of a popular movie, in place of the original soundtrack. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon with the movie The Wizard of Oz might be an example.

Years before I experimented with an early version of cinemateque using my art house 16mm film “Reflections Under a Clear Surface”

We played Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra.

It was a magical combination at the time when the album was new and largely unknown.

Highlights of the 30minute film were  sea snakes on The Swain Reefs and a nude bubble dive at 64 frames per second in crystal waters of The Coral Sea.

The bubble dive later became an Australian TV commercial for a young woman’s skin perfume.

The bubble sequence was shown daily to thousands of Queensland school children attending cinema screening’s of Queensland Seafari and created an thunderous uproar from the kids.

A handful of parents and teachers objected, prompting minor editing of just three or four film frames at Townsville, which toned it down.

(However the complaints were to persist for years proving you can’t please everyone, in retrospect it was fantastic word-of-mouth advertising).

We then drove south to Bowen, Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Yeppoon and Maryborough. Three days in each large city, three sessions per day.

The Department of Education secretly investigated the complaints (fortunately at Maryborough after the edit had been made weeks before) and saw nothing objectionable.

Prior to this, a state government opposition member in “question time” raised the issue of an uncensored film being shown to school children.

It was a storm in a tea cup for a few days during the Joh era, when Queensland was a police state.

Australian Marine Picture Library ©

John Harding Marine Photography ©: 1960 – 2012

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