Limelight Department
The Limelight Department was an Australian film studio. One of the world's first film studios, with its beginnings in 1891, it was operated by the Salvation Army in Melbourne. The studio produced evangelistic material for the Salvation Army, including lantern slides as early as 1891, as well as for private and government contracts. In its 19 years of operation the Limelight Department produced about 400 films of various lengths, making it one of largest film producers of its time.
Beginnings
The Limelight Department unofficially started in 1891, when Adjutant Joseph Perry started a photographic studio in Ballarat, Victoria, to supplement the income of the Salvation Army's Prison Gate Home. At the time, Perry was on compassionate leave from active ministry, as his wife Annie had died earlier that year, leaving Perry to raise their three children. In September 1891, Perry was temporarily reassigned to the Australasian headquarters in Melbourne to assist the Australasian commander, Commissioner Thomas Coombs, in putting together a presentation of General William Booth's In Darkest England program. At this stage, Perry was using lantern slides which projected hand-coloured photographs onto a large screen. Coombs was impressed by the quality and effectiveness of presentation, making Perry's move to Melbourne permanent. The Limelight Department was officially established on 11 June 1892.In 1896, Coombs was replaced as Australasian commander by William Booth's youngest son, Commandant Herbert Booth. Herbert Booth immediately warmed to the innovation of the Limelight Department, giving Perry the freedom and the financial support to expand into the newly developing medium of film. Under Booth's direction, Perry started work on Social Salvation in 1898, one of the first presentations of its type to integrate the traditional lantern slides with film segments. On 20 December 1899, the Limelight Department premiered a series on the Passion at the Collingwood corps. The presentation contained thirteen sections of ninety second duration which portrayed the life of Jesus from birth to death. The presentation was similar in style to that produced by the Lumiere Company earlier that year. However, as none of the original film remains, it cannot be determined if the Limelight Department used Lumiere footage in the presentation.
''Soldiers of the Cross''
The major innovation of the Limelight Department would come in 1899 when Booth and Perry began work on Soldiers of the Cross, one of the first feature-length films in the world.The presentation contained fifteen ninety-second sections and two hundred lantern slides, and ran for two hours. The Salvation Army's pioneering multimedia work premiered at the Melbourne Town Hall on 13 September 1900, to a crowd somewhere between three and four thousand. One reviewer spoke of how the death scenes caused several women to faint in the aisles.
Referred to by the organisation as a 'lecture’, and once thought to be the world's first feature film, it combined 13 short films, over 200 glass slides, hymns, music and the oration of Commandant Herbert Henry Booth, who was the son of Salvation Army founder General William Booth. The production was realised by Major Joseph Henry Perry, an enthusiastic supporter of the new film medium and head of the Salvation Army’s Limelight Department.
While some Lumiere footage was used in the opening passion sequence of the film, the majority of the footage was filmed in Melbourne, either in the attic of 69 Bourke Street, on the tennis court of the Murrumbeena Girls Home, or in the pool at Richmond Baths.
The presentation itself focused of the lives and deaths of early Christian martyrs and cost £550 to produce. The scenes were considered extremely violent for their time, including such images as the stoning of Stephen, the burning of Polycarp and unnamed Christians being tortured, beheaded, killed by gladiators, drowned, or burned alive. The presentation included a cast of 150 Salvation Army officers who were stationed in Melbourne at the time. The many death scenes took their toll, with the cast suffering various injuries, including scorched hair and eyebrows from the fires used.
Herbert Booth toured the lecture around Australia and New Zealand and later to the USA, Europe, South Africa and Canada. The final presentation was given at Melbourne Town Hall on 22 November 1920.
The Limelight Department’s pioneering productions were supported by innovative studio facilities and creative set design. According to Michael Wollenberg, the Salvation Army’s Murrumbeena Girls’ Home was transformed into a 14-acre studio complex, where painted backdrops depicting the Roman Colosseum were hung on tennis courts to create elaborate scenes for Soldiers of the Cross. Smaller sets were constructed on the roof of the Salvation Army Headquarters at 69 Bourke Street, Melbourne—a structure that is considered by some historians to be the world’s oldest surviving film studio in the Southern Hemisphere. The Department's production and art teams developed detailed scripts, constructed period costumes and props, and devised practical effects that were groundbreaking for their time.
No motion picture film from Soldiers of the Cross is known to have survived, nor any text copies of the lecture’s narration. The National Library of Australia acquired glass slides of the production in 1953 and these are now held by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.
Federation of Australia
Soldiers of the Cross fortified the Limelight Department as a major player in the early film industry. However, Soldiers of the Cross would be dwarfed by Inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth, when the Limelight Department was commissioned to film the 1901 Federation of Australia. It was the hope of the New South Wales government that the film would prove an imperishable record of the event, though little of the footage still exists. Perry set up five cameras at various point of the procession route and had to use a fire carriage to move quickly from one camera to the next.Height of the operation
In order that Soldiers of the Cross could be seen by a wide audience, the Limelight Department created groups known as the Biorama Companies. Teams of musicians, lecturers and projectionists would travel throughout Australia presenting the material that the Limelight Department had produced. Screenings were generally held in local halls, but it was the Biorama Companies which sometimes used the sides of buildings as screens so those passing by could see it.When Herbert left the Salvation Army, he was replaced by Commissioner Thomas McKie. McKie encouraged the expansion of the Limelight Department, the creation of additional Biorama Companies and even the reshooting of Soldiers of the Cross in 1909, titled Heroes of the Cross.
In addition to the evangelical material produced for the Biorama Companies, the Limelight produced many films for private clients and the government. Some of the most notable of these were films showing the royal visit of the Duke and Duchess of York for the opening of the first sitting of the Parliament of Australia, the visit of America's Great White Fleet, and the Victoria's Second Boer War Contingent leaving South Africa.
Engaging in such private contracts was a way in which the Limelight Department raised capital to support its operation and the operation of other Salvation Army programs.
In 1898, Booth and Perry constructed a glass-walled film studio at 69 Bourke Street, Melbourne, which remains preserved as an archive and museum maintained by the Salvation Army. Initially, the team filmed with a Lumière Cinématographe, later adopting a Warwick Bioscope by 1901. The Department’s early multimedia productions included the two-and-a-half-hour Social Salvation, which combined slides, film, scripture, and song, setting the stage for the later Soldiers of the Cross. After leaving the Salvation Army in 1902, Herbert Booth took Soldiers of the Cross to San Francisco, extending its influence internationally. William Booth, the Army’s founder, also embraced film, commissioning cameraman Henry Howse to document his travels, with several early films now preserved in the BFI National Archive.
In 1904, Joe Perry and James Dutton were key members of the Australasian contingent attending the Salvation Army International Congress in London. Following the congress, Perry returned to Australia and filmed Bushranging in North Queensland, which film historian Chris Long has identified as the country’s first bushranging drama. This production marked an important milestone in the development of narrative filmmaking in Australia and further demonstrated the Limelight Department’s pioneering role in the nation's early cinema.
Ending of the department
In 1910, McKie was replaced as the Australasian commander by a more conservative commissioner named James Hay. Hay felt that cinema was not something that the church should be involved in and he shut down the Limelight Department at the height of its operation. In his autobiography, Aggressive Salvationism, Hay wrote that "the cinema, as conducted by The Salvation Army, had led to weakness and a lightness incompatible with true Salvationism and was completely ended by me".Hay later admitted that there had been a substantial financial cost in closing the Limelight Department, and many Salvation Army centres took years to recover from the loss of income.
Heritage
The original studio still stands today and is being preserved as part of The Salvation Army - Australia Southern Territory Archives and Museum. One of the films included is the documentary of the Inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth.UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Recognition
In 2021, the Salvation Army Limelight Department Magic Lantern Slides Collection was added to the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register.The collection is recognised for its documentary heritage significance to Australia and the world, highlighting the Limelight Department’s pioneering role in combining photographic, lantern-slide, and early cinematic techniques to communicate social and religious messages.
The UNESCO program honours such collections for their contribution to global heritage and advocates for their ongoing preservation.