F Project Cinema is hosting two screenings of what is believed to be Warrnambool’s first feature film.

Footsteps In The Sand was made in 1948 and was the brainchild of 3YB’s Denzil Howson.

It was originally screened to an audience of 600 people at the Warrnambool Town Hall.

F Project Cinema is showing the film on Saturday at 2pm and 7.30pm at Mozart Hall alongside a selection of short historical 16mm films from the 1930s-1960s from the Alex Wilkins Collection.

Wilkins was a notable photographer at the time and shot Footsteps In The Sand for Howson.

Wilkins’ son Jack, also a renowned Warrnambool photographer, will present the afternoon screening alongside one of the movie’s stars, Mary Fiorini-Lowell (nee Mary Bourke).

Mrs Fiorini-Lowell was a radio star, performing in 300 radio plays in the pre-television era.

She went on to work on several films by Federico Fellini, and became the dubbed voice of Gina Lollobrigida, an Italian actress once voted the most beautiful woman in the world.

The evening session will feature an appearance from Shane Howard, whose mother Teresa was also one of the stars of Footsteps In The Sand.

The film is a murder mystery set in France but filmed in Warrnambool with a local cast and crew led by Howson.

Howson arrived in Warrnambool in the ‘40s and produced radio dramas for 3YB, but returned to Melbourne not long after the completion of Footsteps In The Sand. 

He later worked at GTV9 in the first years of Australian television, including being involved in the broadcast of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. 

When Howson decided to make the film, Alex Wilkins was a natural choice as cameraman as he was one of the few people in Warrnambool with the skills and equipment necessary to make the movie.

Evidence of this can be found in the shorts being screened at the Mozart Hall, which include footage of motorcycle racing at Tower Hill, trains on the breakwater, and the May Racing Carnival.

According to Howson’s son Paul, Howson “had a keen interest in both the art and technology of filmmaking”.

“In the 1930s he and his engineer father constructed their own 35mm projector,” Paul said in the eulogy to his father, which can be found online on a website dedicated to Howson’s career.

“He was making films from the early years — initially on 9.5mm and then later 16mm. With a group of friends he produced a film drama in Warrnambool in the late 1940s.”