1990  |  47 mins  |  Rated G

Directed by Kathryn Millard

Newly restored from the original film negative, Light Years is an invaluable and delightful portrait of the life and work of the celebrated Australian photographer, Olive Cotton.  Built around rare and insightful conversations with Cotton, the film recounts her early career in the 1930s and 40s working with Max Dupain in a ground-breaking photographic studio in Sydney. At the end of the war, Cotton moved to Koorawatha in central New South Wales where she and her husband struggled to gain a living from the land and raise a family. Living for many years without running water or electricity, she continued to take photographs although she was unable to print them. The negatives were carefully stored in an old sea trunk until the 1960s. Eventually friends and family built a darkroom in Cowra, and in the early 1980s Cotton resumed exhibiting her work to critical and public acclaim.

With discussion after the screening with filmmaker Kathryn Millard and the NGA’s Senior Curator of Photography, Shaune Lakin.