A Potted, Semi-Reliable Account of “27” Years of Cinémathèquing

Somewhere at home I’ve squirreled away Melbourne Cinémathèque calendars dating back to 1999 – though this was not my sporadic first year of attendance, which was, I think, in 1997. Rather, 1999 was the first year I decorated a spot on the wall of a particular share house with one of these calendars, cueing me into attending thereafter with some regularity. For the years 1999-2007, that wall was in the bathroom of a tumbledown terrace house in Fitzroy which increasingly admitted indoors more and more of the great outdoors, accounting for the enduringly mildewy condition of several years’ worth of calendars. Nevertheless, they are prized possessions!

In 2001, I was granted the role of “Webmaster” – a term I found cringeworthy then, and still do, if tinged now with a patina of quaintness – of a recently minted online film journal, Senses of Cinema (which started publication in late 1999). Senses had taken on the publication of CTEQ: Annotations on Film, previously included in the Australian Teachers of Media print publication, Metro. (Another prized possession: a 1997 edition of Metro with an arresting still from Diabolik (Danger: Diabolik, Mario Bava, 1968) on the cover, linked to a Bava season at the Cinémathèque that I no longer rightly recall if I actually attended.)

Metro 110 (Diabolik, Mario Bava, 1968)

For something like ten years I laid out – marked up, old school like, in bespoke HTML – literally hundreds of Annotations and, in so doing, feasted on the scholarly and cinephilic words to absorb a wide-ranging survey of film history. This reflected the eclecticism of the corresponding programming at the Cinémathèque – programming I was increasingly enjoying first-hand.

I retain a special fondness for the days when the State Film Theatre hosted the Cinémathèque, for all that venue’s unprepossessingness. Sure, the projection facilities weren’t the equal of its successor, ACMI (b. 2002), but it offered a greater social dimensionality. All who arrived early could situate themselves at a table in the one unpretentious, open communal space; feel comfortable whether attending with company or without, while enjoying a bite to eat – for the life of me, and to my shame, I can’t remember (whether I ever knew) the name of the woman who was there most weeks serving tasty homemade soups and other treats. She nonetheless contributed greatly to that venue’s convivial atmosphere, before a bell would ring, and all and sundry would know it was time to file into the cinema, in a civilised fashion…

I joined the Cinémathèque committee back in… 2012, I think? Doing so coincided closely with co-founding the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia (CaSFFA), which had its first edition in 2013 and, not uncoincidentally, its first co-presented program with the Cinémathèque. This, happily, would become an annual collaboration. That inaugural program was “Preludes to the Czechoslovak New Wave: Trnka and Uher” and, along with a digital restoration of Štefan Uher’s revolutionary New Wave-kickstarter, Slnko v sieti (The Sun in a Net, 1963), featured 35mm prints of Jiří Trnka’s glorious stop-motion puppet pairing of Sen noci svatojánské (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1959) and his despairing finale, Ruka (The Hand, 1965). Those films were the joint subject of the first Annotation I wrote myself, something I’ve made a point of contributing to at intervals ever since. That year must also have marked my first contribution of program and season notes to the print calendar. Hurá!

Landing those films a berth on the big screen in ACMI Cinema 1 – then, for some reason, named Cinema 2 – was immensely satisfying. It heralded the start of an era in which I would annually contribute something to the Cinémathèque’s programming. Until 2018, this was exclusively of a Czech and/or Slovak persuasion, linked to CaSFFA. Thereafter though, upon being promoted to Cinémathèque co-curator status, my contributions would encompass a much wider variety of focuses and materials.

Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia (2013-2014)

The mix of formats in 2013 was also the harbinger of the end of an era; although the Cinémathèque still screens films on celluloid as often as possible, the time has now passed when I might find myself temporarily stashing a stockpile of precious film prints in my own home, or even shipping such precious cargo in my personal checked luggage when travelling from, say, Melbourne to Prague (or simply from Melbourne to Sydney, to then have cans of film dispatched to Prague by consular post). Actually, handling and transporting rare archival materials always felt like an honour, whereas it’s very hard these days to romanticise the couriering of a hard drive or, moreover, a DCP download! (And don’t get me started on the manifold ways by which digital media can impose complications above and beyond those attached to the shipping and projection of a 16mm or 35mm print.)

There are any number of Cinémathèque anecdotes and characters I could recount from over the years. Episodes that leap first and fondest to mind include summertime program launch events and occasional committee meetings held, improbably, on the rooftop of the glorious Art Deco/Gothic Manchester Unity Building overlooking the Melbourne Town Hall, which only that one time necessitated a call-out to the fire brigade. Not to put out a literal fire, mind you, but rather to retrieve an especially eccentric committee member who’d gone off-piste and managed to get trapped in a stairwell…

Eccentricity has long abounded among the Cinémathèque flock. A dishevelled, beardy character dubbed “Hollywood Dave” – nicknamed, I’m not sure by whom – was a front-row fixture at screenings for many a year, given to occasionally talking back to films; his wisecracks often elicited gentle giggles from the wider audience. For the most part, though, Cinémathèque-goers abide by an unwritten code of conduct, exhibiting exemplary in-cinema etiquette, with even those occasional transgressors whose mobile devices should light-up after the house lights have gone down, and who are typically prompted to switch them the fuck off with a polite firmness, almost invariably complying immediately.

There was that one intriguing punch-up at ACMI a few years back, mind you… and apparently between friends! Not sure we ever got to the bottom of what that was all about.

I should close by acknowledging what a privilege it has been to be in the engine room of this vital, august contributor to Melbourne film culture for over ten years now. Michael Koller and Adrian Danks were both integral to the Cinémathèque’s programming and operations when I first started attending in the 1990s, and remain integral now too – to them, and to many other notable programmers who came before me, inclusive of Quentin Turnour, Clare Stewart, Michelle Carey, Karli Lukas, Louise Sheedy and Eloise Ross, I say, thank you for the education! For all the big-screen delights! For the commissioning of so many great writers on film to pen Annotations to enrich those screenings! And, ultimately, for entrusting me (and, more recently, Andréas Giannopoulos as well) to join those ranks, to provide the same service, if inflected with a distinct sensibility and informed by differing obsessions and film fetishes.

Viva la Cinémathèque! Ať žije Cinémathèque! Here’s to another 40 years – and to another 75!

CTEQ: Annotations on Film (Melbourne Cinémathèque, 1996)