Puffs of Smoke
Weird and Wild Artifacts from the Early Era of Australian Silent Film
Puffs of Smoke is a performance event combining live music, spoken word and film, focussed on the early history of the Australian silent era
Film music composer Phillip Johnston (The Music of Chance, Faithful) performs newly-composed scores for a variety of short films and tells entertaining tales of the rollicking and surprising history of the first 30 years of film in Australia, and its formative impact on world cinema.
These films, and their new music, combine a variety of techniques, subjects and styles, and include excerpts from The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), and the Salvation Army’s Soldiers of the Cross (1906), which both constitute cinema ‘firsts’ of a sort.
Johnston’s previous silent film scores include Tod Browning’s The Unknown (1927), The George Méliès Project, Teinsosuke Kinugasa’s Page of Madness (1926), FW Murnau’s Faust (1926) and Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventure’s of Prince Achmed (1926).
See HERE for more details on Johnston’s 30-year background in creating and composing original scores for silent film.
The idea of this hybrid performance (combining silent film, live/pre-recorded music and storytelling) is based on two things:
First, the success of Johnston’s collaboration WORDLESS! with Art Spiegelman, a related combination of visuals, lecture and live music performance, commissioned by the Sydney Opera House, where it premiered in 2013 and has subsequently toured to the US, Europe and South America;
And secondly, Australia’s important role in the early development of film, a fact of which few Australians are aware.
The storytelling consists of short entertaining tales that give a snapshot of early Australian film history, and the films are chosen not only for their performance value, but also for the stories that surround them – the history of the bushranger films, the Corrick family circus, Harry Julius’s ‘Cartoons of the Moment’ (WW1 propaganda film newsreels that were among the first stop-motion animation films worldwide), and Soldiers of the Cross (1900), an evangelical performance art happening.
“Johnston’s 70-minute marriage of music and image takes the audience back to where it all started . . . rich and fascinating” – Limelight Magazine, 2026
Here are two short video clips to suggest what you will see and hear.
Puffs of Smoke tours with just two company members: one performer (Phillip Johnston) and one tech support. We supply all films and music. The entire performance lasts circa 75 minutes, technical requirements are fairly simple and it can be performed in a wide variety of venues. We can work with you to address any technical/venue issues. See HERE for a tech rider and stage plot.
Here is a very short excerpt from Puffs of Smoke , our reinvention of The Story of the Kelly Gang fragments.
Here is a short excerpt from a very different kind of film that is also part of the program, Harry Julius’s Evolution of the Skirt.
For further information, contact:
Phillip Johnston (composer/performer) phillip@phillipjohnston.com
(+61) 424 655 317, or
Robert Love (producer)
robertlove@iinet.net.au
(+61) 0416 110 487
photos/videos by Rachel Knepfer.
See menu at top of page for a full view of Phillip Johnston’s HOMEPAGE.