[KenRa Films Present: the Kenneth Rankine Home Movie Collection: Reel 25]

Kenneth Carruthers Rankine (1890 - 1968) was a keen amateur cinematographer and filmmaker. This collection of his home movies has been donated to ACMI by Kenneth’s granddaughter. The collection represents a wonderful slice of life in Australia; with contents including scenes of everyday life, major family occasions, holidays around Victoria and views of Melbourne.

This film is a series of scenarios based on a question which is also the title of the reel: ‘Where is it?’ and features Kenneth’s son-in-law Bob Wootton as the person looking for the answer and responding to each segment. Kenneth has Bob look in a book from a bookshelf which contains the hand written sequence titles. Kenneth also uses both black and white and colour sequences to add to the more dramatic feel of the reel. Kenneth has Bob pondering the title questions through the sequences as well as laughing at the end of some. the reel ends with Bob laughing uproariously.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:57:00 first colour scenario begins with title ‘Mr McCraw’s Orchids’ showing us Mr McCraw among his orchid plants in a hothouse as well as Kenneth’s favoured individual shots of individual blooms.

00:02:29:00 we see the next sub title, ‘Eastern Beach Geelong’ followed by colour footage of children playing in the water, foreshore recreational equipment such as diving boards and waterwheels, piers and crowds on the boardwalks and swimmers in and out of the water.

00:05:18:00 several yachts appear in the sea in what could be a race.

00:05:44:00 Bob opens the book again to the sub title ‘Skating at St Moritz’ followed by a colour sequence of a large scale ice skating show involving multiple performers and skotches at St Moritz, (presumably) in Melbourne’s St Kilda.

00:07:45:00 starts with the sub titles, ‘Hobbies - What is yours? Is it Model Boats?’ with Bob gazing toward footage of some intricate model boats and ships sailing and steaming around a shallow (and what appears to be purpose built) pool. The pool is surrounded by older children who appear to be operating the models.

00:14:52:00 Bob reveals the next question ‘or is it Model Trains?’. Here Kenneth shows us a group of men who operate model trains on a track raised high enough from the ground that they are able to ride the trains which seem to operate by steam.

00:18:21:00 ‘Or is it like mine - The Camera?’. Here we see a man in a park with what looks like a ‘box brownie’ camera taking pictures of seemingly random women (though we have seen one of them in other reels).