From Joseph Losey’s M to Jeni Thornley’s Island Home Country: The Melbourne Cinémathèque and Australian Film Culture

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Dedicated to Michael Koller, without whom none of this would have been possible.

You have to adapt and remain the same. The Melbourne Cinémathèque is one of Australia’s longest-running film culture organisations, preceded by only a couple of years by the State Film Centre of Victoria (now ACMI) and the Hobart Film Society in Tasmania (now operating on a very diminished scale). It started operations as the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) in 1948, held its first screening, Sergei Eisenstein’s then recently unbanned Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkin, 1925) in early March 1949, before becoming the Melbourne Cinémathèque in 1984. As Kirsten Stevens, Barrett Hodsdon and I have argued² – mine a chapter on MUFS in the 1960s published in the book, Go! Melbourne in the Sixties – it was also central to the development of the Melbourne Film Festival, running its own festival from 1949 and integral to saving the wider organisation in 1954. At its mid-1960s peak, MUFS was the University of Melbourne’s largest club, boasting around 2000 members. It gave opportunities to figures who went on to have significant roles in the broader film and cultural industries such as Gil Brealey, Barry Humphries (who was “publicity agent” in 1952), Jack Hibberd, Robin Laurie, Brian Davies and Alan Finney – and many who didn’t. A key shift to trace across these subsequent decades might be that many of the key Cinémathèque figures now go onto curatorial careers (reflective of the broader compartmentalisation of screen culture). Like many such organisations, it has sometimes been taken for granted, marginalised and written out of broader histories of cinema in Australia. But it has also been a bellwether for film culture in Melbourne that can tell us much about the wider economy of cinema.

After a period of decline in the 1970s, the Cinémathèque was rejuvenated by the efforts of a small number of dedicated volunteers – most importantly, Michael Koller, who is still the organisation’s key individual, is one of the major unsung figures of Australian screen culture and also gives a detailed account of the Cinémathèque’s history elsewhere in this dossier – and moved to the then newly opened Glasshouse Theatre at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in 1984. Although it maintained a link to a university, or an institute of technology wanting to become one (something that did happen in 1987), this actually represented a partial break from the university sector. RMIT was primarily chosen because of its new cinema in the Peter Corrigan-designed Building 8, and the organisation continued to be independent of the institute’s student union.

This set the pattern for the combination of collaboration (with embassies, cultural organisations, festivals, key entities of the 1980s and 1990s like the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group and the Modern Image Makers Association (MIMA), and individuals like Philip Brophy and Sam Rohdie) with hard-won independence. It has also always drawn upon individuals who represent no particular or at least singular affiliations. For example, the current programming team includes an academic and critic from RMIT (myself), the current creative director of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival (Cerise Howard), an independent filmmaker (Andréas Giannopoulos), a Swanston St dentist (Koller) and an academic and critic from Swinburne (Eloise Ross). The involvement of both academics predates their employment by their respective universities. Although the Cinémathèque has received very welcome and ongoing though often irregular support from a rollcall of funding agencies and state and federal institutions such as VicScreen (previously Film Victoria), the Australian Film Commission, the Australian Film Institute, Screen Australia, the City of Melbourne, the State Film Centre and ACMI (outlasting some of these organisations) it is still largely reliant on and funded by its membership-derived income. It is “the relationship of trust and loyalty built up with its members through its commitment to a specific ethos,” as The Age critic Jake Wilson argues, that has granted the Cinémathèque a unique place in contemporary Melbourne film culture.³

At its instigation in the mid-1980s, the Cinémathèque existed alongside a raft of connected or even equivalent organisations (including MIMA, a then culturally active Australian Film Institute, The Melbourne Super 8 Film Group, various other film societies and the dying embers of the National Film Theatre of Australia), repertory cinemas (including the sadly long departed Liberty Cinema in Brunswick run by Paul Harris and the Valhalla in Richmond), and a very different tertiary sector (higher education was still free back then). The environment for the types of activities it undertakes has changed massively over the last 40 years. Whereas the Cinémathèque was once one organisation amongst many, it now provides a scale or model of volunteer-led practice that is very unusual in Australia and even remarkable on an international scale. Although the Federation of Victorian Film Societies (FVFS; founded just after MUFS in 1949) can still boast over 60 member organisations, the scale, economy, ambition and reputation of the Cinémathèque has little crossover with these other entities (almost all are film societies with very small memberships screening exclusively on DVD and Blu-ray). 

The Cinémathèque boasts a robust membership (the society often has around 2000 members), an annual operating budget of a little over $200,000, and a specifically curated program mostly utilising digital restorations shown on DCP and archival 35mm prints drawn from many of the major archives around the world such as the Museum of Modern Art, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), the British Film Institute (BFI) and Cinecittà Luce. It also forges collaborations with like-minded organisations such as ACMI (most importantly), the Melbourne Queer Film Festival (co-curator Howard is the current artistic director), the Italian Institute of Culture, the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia (of which Howard was also the founding artistic director), Senses of Cinema, specific individuals (like John Hughes, Margot Nash, John Flaus and Deane Williams), and various other embassies and cultural institutes.

At the same time, it has backed away from its commitment to an unwieldy and now unfashionable National Cinémathèque circuit – which it programmed between 1993 and 2006, and which toured with the assistance of the AFI, ACMI and AFC/Screen Australia – to consolidate its Melbourne base. This globally focused activity represents a significant shift from the organisation’s historical reliance on the National Library of Australia’s large 16mm collection and reflects the necessary shift in scale and professionalism of the Cinémathèque’s activities over the last 25 years. Also, although I think it is important to recognise that the Cinémathèque is a film society, its change of name in 1984 does also represent a shift in its mission, identity and ambition, and recognises its maverick status within the film society movement. It hasn’t been a member of the state (FVFS) or national bodies since the mid 1990s and has sometimes been critical of some of their activities and approaches – which is not to undervalue the vital importance of film societies more generally.

Over these 40 years the Cinémathèque has weathered competition, the waning of repertory cinemas and film societies, changes in funding structures, the opening and closing of numerous venues, the partial return to repertory screenings through commercial independent outlets like the Nova, Palace Cinemas and the Lido Cinemas, and shifts in tastes and practices of filmgoing. Whereas the bread-and-butter of the Cinémathèque was once classical Hollywood, it is now most definitely post-war European and Asian art cinema. The most commercial thing the organisation can do now, in terms of shoring up its finances, is run an Andrei Tarkovsky season; it’s a pity he only made seven features and produced films in the Soviet Union (at least in the current political climate). Throughout its history, the Cinémathèque has been an important interlocutor in localised understandings of international film culture – this is likely its greatest contribution – and has been a significant shaper and incubator of curatorial practice and tastes. For example, it has provided key formative experiences and opportunities for people like Clare Stewart, now Managing Director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (previous Head of Festivals at the BFI and artistic director of the Sydney Film Festival), Louise Sheedy and Quentin Turnour, both of whom moved on to film curatorial positions at the NFSA and the Australian National Archives (in the case of Turnour), and Michelle Carey (Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Film Festival for a number of years, a long-term editor of Senses of Cinema, and now programming across a range of international festivals including Rotterdam and New York), amongst others. It also represents one of the few surviving or living links to the immediate post-war film culture.

The Cinémathèque’s programming policy has shifted with the times and is now dominated by a season-based calendar that rhymes with the broader festival ecology of Melbourne. That said, it is still beholden to the legacy of auteurist-based programming directly influenced by the nouvelle vague, figures like Andrew Sarris and journals such as Movie magazine, forces which also helped transform MUFS in the 1960s. But the current programming ethos is also highly inclusive and responsive to contemporary trends and requirements – and certainly reflects the need to address issues of gender, identity, sexuality and diversity, which have not always been a major strength – while still celebrating such classical Hollywood directors as Raoul Walsh.

This is, inevitably, a partisan view of the Melbourne Cinémathèque as such an account would be very difficult to produce outside of the organisation. I first attended the Cinémathèque for the April 11, 1984, screening of Joseph Losey’s remake of Fritz Lang’s M (1951) – a kind of doubly auteurist, almost critical work that is somewhat symptomatic of the organisation and what it can offer – just a couple of months after the organisation had formed and moved to RMIT. My own involvement with the Cinémathèque is almost fully coincident with it and I cannot truly separate it from adult life. This confession is not meant to be a nostalgic reminiscence but a statement about the importance of individual commitment – whether mine or that of many others who have served on the committee over the years – as well as the patterns of continuity and the specificity of place that have helped cement the organisation’s survival. I’m not sure this could have happened anywhere else but Melbourne, at least not for me. In 1988 – when RMIT decided it would be good to have one of its students serve as president – I became more directly involved. In the meantime, I served as President until 2006, before returning to the role in 2024, have edited almost every program calendar since 1992, was editor of CTEQ: Annotations on Film (itself published in some form since 1957) from the late 1990s until 2014, have served as co-curator since 1994, and have been granted the only honorary life-time membership.

But the Cinémathèque’s true strength has also been its ability to attract a very wide membership base, and also draw upon the contributions of a strong, open and regenerative committee structure. Some things have remained largely the same: the first screenings of the society were on Wednesdays; the program calendar has largely served the same function and followed the same format for almost 40 years (though it has got better in terms of the quality of writing and design); writers are still commissioned to provide contextual and critical notes on the films that are then made available at screenings (the international flavour and reach of this does indicate an important and very welcome shift since starting to collaborate with Senses of Cinema in early 2000); attendance is still membership based (hard for some to understand in a neoliberal world); and Michael (since 1974) and I are still doing it. That said, the organisation also actively responds to various social, spatial, technological and cultural shifts… so the current success of the organisation is significantly enhanced by a strong social media presence made possible by new blood on the committee as well as constating evolving audience. The Cinémathèque has been able to remain identifiably the same organisation (providing one of the few instances of such continuity within an increasingly fractious screen culture) while also shifting with Melbourne’s and the world’s evolving film culture. 

But how does the Cinémathèque represent or respond to its location in Melbourne, a place far away from the centres of film culture internationally? Anyone who has followed our curator-driven programming will realise that Australian or Melbourne-based cinema is represented in a sparing but highly selective fashion. Part of the danger and responsibility of success (and the need to make money to keep afloat) is that we have to program with a least one eye to what we think will be most popular with our audience, while also balancing this with more personal, esoteric and even marginalised material – and I think you know where Australian cinema mostly sits within this economy. This is an important shift from the somewhat freer days at RMIT’s Glasshouse Theatre in the 1980s and the very different financial context the organisation then operated under (of much lower income but also massively lower costs). Nevertheless, in this year’s program there are screenings devoted to the 90th birthday of Australian film icon John Flaus, the essayistic documentaries of Jeni Thornley, the productions made by MUFS in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and a two-week season dedicated to activist filmmaker, Tom Zubrycki. Although not as large a focus as we might like it to be, this is an essential part of what we do and can offer. But the key to the Cinémathèque’s philosophy is the maintenance of a film culture and the critical placement of films within specific and varied contexts – so Australian and even Melbourne-based cinema and filmmakers are not prioritised but are placed within national, global and local frameworks and alongside examples from across the medium’s history. Screening at the Cinémathèque is a badge of honour that needs to be earned and we’re proud of many of the programs we’ve devoted to the likes of the Melbourne and Sydney Filmmakers Co-Ops, Lynn-Maree Milburn, Cecil Holmes, Margot Nash, Senses founder Bill Mousoulis, Gillian Armstrong, Amiel Courtin-Wilson, Ivan Sen and many others.

To finish this discussion of the contribution of the Cinémathèque to Melbourne and Australian film culture I’d like to say a few words about the wonderful trailer made by Nick Moore and Kim Munro for the 2016 program (frame grabs from which illustrate this article). It is a wonderful illustration of the mixing of the local and the global and how the Cinémathèque negotiates those tensions and demands. By finding playful pictorial analogies in Melbourne for the work of key directors of world cinema (say, Antonioni’s Red Desert [1964] and the oil refineries of Newport, Bresson’s Balthazar and Phar Lap), this fast-paced, montage-driven trailer provides a condensed reading of the Cinémathèque’s battle-hardened ethos: dominated by key figures in the history of world cinema and profoundly marked by the tastes of its curators, the program and trailer aim to place these films within a cultural ecology of Melbourne. Of course, if you look a bit more closely (or have the capacity to still the image) you’ll glimpse a more idiosyncratic and less canonical perspective, with even key Melbourne figures starting to appear: Nadia Tass and David Parker, Richard Lowenstein, Ana Kokkinos and John Hughes (one of our most important local collaborators of the years and also a contributor to this dossier). Many but not everyone is included. In looking back at this trailer, I was reminded of Jake Wilson’s comments about the Cinémathèque when he launched a book I edited on Robert Altman:

something I’ve valued for many years about the Cinémathèque, which is that it’s a broad church but not an infinitely broad church. As an organisation, it’s unapologetic about the idea that some films are more important than others – about the idea of maintaining a canon. To be sure, this is a very open-ended canon that can incorporate B-movies by Roger Corman, and experimental cinema, and little-known Australian independent films. But I’m fairly confident you’re not going to see a retrospective on Michael Bay or Baz Luhrmann at the Cinémathèque any time soon.⁴

Who knows what the next 40 years might bring, but I’m pretty sure he’s right on that last point.⁵

Endnotes