More air time for Anzacs

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Seven to screen academic’s TV episode

Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

The Seven Network in Australia will broadcast another Anzac Day-themed episode produced in part by an Avondale academic for a Christian television program.

Fighting Mac: the story of William McKenzie is a half-hour episode written for It Is Written Oceania by Associate Professor Daniel Reynaud, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Theology at Avondale College of Higher Education. It will screen on Seven’s digital channel 7TWO at 2.00 PM on April 25.

“Mac became the most famous Anzac by the end of the war,” says Daniel. He never carried a gun or fired a shot. “Through their selfless deeds and heroic ministering, the Anzac chaplains gained the respect and admiration of the soldiers—not by taking life, but by saving it.”

It Is Written will promote an offer of a free monograph written by Daniel and called Faith of the Anzacs during the broadcast of the episode.

Presenter Gary Kent and Daniel Reynaud on location at Gallipoli.

Daniel travelled to Gallipoli in western Turkey with the It Is Written crew to serve as the historical consultant and to appear on camera for each of six episodes. He wrote the episodes. Seven and its affiliates screened a compilation of the first two episodes—as an Angel Award-winning special, also called Faith of the Anzacs—on Anzac Day last year. In New South Wales and Queensland, this preceded the traditional Australian Rules Football match between Collingwood and Essendon. More than 1000 people—a record for It Is Written—requested Daniel’s monograph after viewing the special.

Daniel’s interest lies in the Anzac legend and its representation in early Australian films. He is the author of Celluloid Anzacs: The Great War Through Australian Cinema and The Hero of the Dardanelles and Other World War One Silent Dramas. The former served as the basis of a speech Daniel presented at the Shine of Remembrance in Melbourne last Wednesday (April 11).

Daniel’s work with the National Film and Sound Archive in the recovery and partial reconstruction of several silent films, including The Hero of the Dardanelles (1915), Australia’s first Gallipoli movie, also served him well during a panel discussion on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s RN Drive program the following day (April 12). Host Waleed Aly explored with Daniel and two other guests, one a University of Melbourne lecturer and the other the host of Radio National’s Movie Time, how and why our understanding of history is shaped by the movies.