Bendigo Writers Festival

To research his novel, The Electric Hotel, Dominic Smith visited the family home of the Lumiere brothers in Lyon, and retraced the steps of First World War cinematographers through Belgium, discovering that, far from melodramas with exclamatory subtitles, many silent films were extraordinary works of art. Many were later lost, and foraging in the archives, pondering those silent masterpieces, led Smith to create his story. He talks with Sarah L'Estrange about where his quest began and what he discovered along the way.