For decades, the Salvation Army’s Soldiers of the Cross was legendary in the annals of Australian screen history, as our – and perhaps the world’s – first feature film. Film historians now understand that it was rather a complex ‘multimedia’ drama, combining magic lantern slides, music and live performance with no more than 13 minutes of film. But how it actually looked and sounded – and the way it was a foretaste of how Australian feature films really would come to be made in the coming years – is still argued about. Thanks to new research into the original glass magic lantern slides used in its presentation, media historian Dr Martyn Jolly looks beyond the social history and explores what Soldiers of the Cross was – as a popular media experience and a work of art.

Hand coloured magic lantern slides of Christians being martyred in a lime-kiln, from Soldiers of the Cross, Australia, 1900
Collection: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra