Union House North Court, Melbourne University (1974)From MUFS to the Melbourne Cinémathèque: Our Evolving Journey Through Cinema Part I Michael Koller November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque Issue 111 MUFS In the early 1970s, major Hollywood films were generally released within a relatively short worldwide window, while many non-English language and arthouse films could take years to get to Australia. There was no streaming, no DVDs or videos, no cable television. Occasionally there were one-off screenings, usually matinees on weekends, and, of course, films screened regularly on TV. The premiere television screenings were usually on a Sunday night, and there were midday movies every day. Some film societies screened monthly (I joined one such organisation, the Mordialloc Film Society aged 16, with my friend Peter Nagels), and the Melbourne Film Festival (MFF) screened for two weeks around the Queen’s Birthday weekend. MFF screened two feature films a night, with a few more titles showing on the weekend. There were no other film festivals in Victoria at this time. MFF had a copyright on the name and no one else was permitted to use the film festival moniker. However, there were other sporadic film screenings. For example, Quality Films (a film distributor from Sydney) had a substantial collection of world cinema classics that would screen for weekly seasons at the Union Theatre at the University of Melbourne. Additionally, there were a few week-long film seasons interspersed amongst the Quality Films weeks (often by the guys that eventually opened the Valhalla Cinema in the suburb of Richmond in 1976). Other tertiary institutions occasionally had film seasons, and by the late ’70s the Australian Film Institute also operated an arthouse cinema. There was an art cinema boom in the late ’70s, but my journey started a little earlier. Film Journal (April 1961) I joined Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) in 1973 as a first-year undergraduate student. In those days screenings were in the afternoons on Wednesday (which was the traditional sports day at the university) and Friday afternoons. Both screenings took place in the university’s Union Theatre, which showed 35mm. At that time, Wednesdays were dedicated to re-screenings of recent commercial releases, not dissimilar to what repertory cinemas have now been doing for years. Directors featured included Altman, Scorsese, Hitchcock, Bergman, Woody Allen, Leone, and the more commercially viable nouvelle vague: Chabrol, Truffaut and early Godard. These very popular Wednesday sessions, and similar screenings at Sydney University, inspired the founders of the Valhalla Cinemas (as noted above). The Friday presentations highlighted more testing material – later Godard, Brazil’s Cinema Novo, Pasolini, Bellocchio, the Japanese New Wave (Oshima, Terayama, Imamura), Soviet silent cinema, Renoir, Italian neorealism, etc. Friday nights were reserved for screenings of films on 16mm in the Undergraduate Lounge, a small, intimate room. These screenings were generally of prints from the German and French embassies, supplied free-of-charge as cultural artefacts that encompassed the broad spectrum from the silent era to contemporary cinema. This was eventually supplemented by 16mm prints from the National Library Film Lending Collection (NLFLC), which began operation in 1975. During my first year at university, I attended only a few of the MUFS screenings. There was the need to acclimatise to university life, and there were also so many other distractions. It was only through the National Film Theatre of Australia (NFTA) screenings at the dental hospital theatrette (next door to the university) in 1974 that I became friends with other like-minded souls, and quickly joined the committee of MUFS along with several of my other NFTA friends (some of whom attended Melbourne University and some who didn’t). When we joined the committee, it was in transition. Most of the old guard, those who had been involved with making films in the ’60s and early ’70s, and those who had produced the (original) Annotations on Film, Film Journal and other film-related publications during the halcyon days of MUFS, had departed the organisation. About the only remaining member, and for us, the most important one, was Doug Ling, who taught cinema studies at RMIT and (most importantly for us) was the person who booked our 35mm film prints for screenings. He continued doing this for a couple of years, out of a sense of duty, until we had gained the necessary skills to succeed him. By this stage, the committee was dominated by hardcore film buffs; those I had grown to know through the NFTA screenings and other related film events, and who went on to become my closest friends. Dumbo Theatrical Poster L’amour fou Theatrical Poster For a few years, the old screening structure continued, but with a dwindling membership. In 1977, we dropped the Friday afternoon showings in the Union Theatre and opted for less expensive screening options on 16mm in the Old Arts Building. Adventurously, we also held a “continuous” film weekend that year, at the Victorian Amateur Cine Club building, that began at 7:30 pm on Friday and concluded at 10:00pm on Sunday night, with only 10 to 15-minute breaks between each film. This marathon included Disney’s Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen, 1941), immediately followed by Straub-Huillet’s Geschichtsunterricht (History Lessons, 1972), and a 2:00am screening of Rivette’s L’amour fou (1969, which, in those days, was being shown in its two-and-a-half-hour version). The following year, afraid to repeat the exercise, we organised three night seasons in the Old Arts Building dedicated to: Italian neorealism; Fritz Lang and Carl Dreyer; and the French New Wave. The 16mm screenings were free to members; the 35mm screenings in the Union Theatre were 50 cents for members and $1.50 for non-members; and the night seasons (each including 14 films) were $4.00. The society did receive a little money from the student union, the printing was mainly done on roneo-ed sheets for free, and the venues, apart from the Union Theatre, were gratis as well (except for the fee for security in the Old Arts Building). Yet, there were ongoing issues. The membership continued to decline, I and the rest of the committee were no longer students, and it was becoming more difficult to arrange screenings in the Union Theatre as live productions took priority over film screenings. In 1979, we held 16mm screenings on Monday and Wednesday nights with twelve late-night screenings on Friday nights including Franju’s Nuits rouges (Shadowman, 1974), Fassbinder’s Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972), Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress (1934). It didn’t really help. Attendances continued to dwindle. As the new decade dawned, a radical new plan was implemented. Screenings were to be restricted to the Undergraduate Lounge on Thursday nights, using only 16mm prints available from the embassies and the National Library of Australia. Still, the program was great, featuring Hitchcock, Ozu, Griffith, Dreyer, Renoir, Godard, Melville, Rossellini, Truffaut, Wenders, Straub-Huillet, Cocteau, Lubitsch, Bresson and Nicholas Ray, amongst others. These were names all very familiar to our faithful long-term membership. Night of the Living Dead Theatrical Poster Shadowman Theatrical Poster The Undergraduate Lounge was cosy, but it only seated around 40 to 50 comfortably. We had fitted a screen several years earlier and the room didn’t have a high ceiling, so the seating was arranged either side of the two projectors set at the back of the room. Free coffee and tea with biscuits was also offered, although donations were appreciated to cover costs. I projected at most of the screenings. This worked well enough over the next few years until 1983, even though rumblings got louder each year about the lack of student involvement. Before 1981, we had sporadically produced loose roneo-ed sheets that included one to two paragraph summaries of the films screening. These were a kind of hybrid of our current, approximately one-thousand-word original reviews published by Senses of Cinema, and the 70–80-word summaries found on our calendars. The final compilation of this kind was ten looseleaf pages that covered the period from 26 June to 14 August 1980. They would list the director, a couple of the performers and, perhaps, another crew member or two. At the beginning of 1981 our first set of proper program notes were collated. This was a simple affair printed on foolscap pages and stapled together. Subsequently, all issues became annual but the first appeared in two volumes covering Term 1 and then Terms 2 and 3, tying in with the university teaching schedule. At that time, the writings were simply brief extracts excerpted from articles written by local and international film scholars. Almost no original writing was included unless other appropriate material could be found. The Passion of Joan of Arc Theatrical Poster Alphaville Theatrical Poster In 1983 programming continued in the vein of the previous few years: Demy, Franju, Buñuel, Capra, Huston, Hawks, Kurosawa, Godard, Lang, Carné and Rainer. Things had been going well, and then in May we screened Dreyer’s La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928) and Godard’s Alphaville (1965). This was a great double bill, of course, but around 100 people arrived for the screening. It was literally standing room only. John Flaus, who had originally produced a leaflet (Buff) highlighting important films screening on TV and around Melbourne had been building a committed and engaged audience through his enthusiastic and highly insightful ramblings on community radio station 3RRR (on his show Film Buffs Forecast). Our audience across that year had been steadily building, but this was a crucial moment registering a significant change. We needed a new venue, especially as the University of Melbourne no longer wanted to support our endeavours. In a fortuitous coincidence, RMIT had built a new, small cinema called the Glasshouse (partly in homage to Georges Méliès’ studio in which the main stage was surrounded entirely by glass walls and ceilings to allow in the copious and necessary bright sunlight). The Glasshouse was equipped with 16mm equipment, could project VHS, and would seat around 180 people. The negotiations with RMIT were very simple. All they required was that several people on our committee should be from RMIT. We decided that we would screen on Wednesday nights as this didn’t clash with the NFTA screenings (now run by the Australian Film Institute) at the State Film Theatre (on Fridays). We considered our programming to be an adjunct to the NFTA, which mainly screened seasons of imported 35mm prints. Importantly, a new name for the organisation was required and Trevor Bergroth, who was, at the time, the Melbourne Times film critic and a member of our committee, made the outrageous suggestion to name ourselves the Melbourne Cinémathèque in homage to La cinémathèque française (and in deference to the nouvelle vague, whom we idolised). We also wrote a constitution which replaced the conventional he/him with she/her. MUFS had, since the 1970s at least, had a strong representation of women on the committee, with three going on to become president. One of these key women, Marg Irwin, would preside over this transitional period and become the Cinémathèque’s long serving association secretary and public officer. The Melbourne Cinémathèque would continue as a not-for-profit organisation and has remained so until the present day. The Melbourne Cinémathèque at RMIT University A Woman is a Woman Theatrical Poster A Married Woman Theatrical Poster Screenings began at the Glasshouse on 29 February 1984, with Godard’s Une femme est une femme (1961) and Une femme mariée (1964). The calendar consisted of three terms, corresponding with RMIT term dates and separated by a break period of four to six weeks. This also aligned well with the NLFLC’s conditions for its borrowers. The official program finished at the end of November. There were no seasons, and the program was printed on an A5 card with dates, times and titles (with directors in parenthesis). The card provided no further information about the films, but we did print a 40-page booklet of program notes (for $2.00) and sold tea and instant coffee during the intermissions. The nights were thematically programmed around themes, genres, countries and directors and included films by such important figures as Bresson, Ozu, Hawks, Sternberg, Powell (and Pressburger), Eisenstein, Kluge, Dreyer, Chaplin, Bunuel, Pasolini, Straub-Huillet, Resnais, Rossellini, Siegel, Melville, Anger, Akerman, Riefenstahl, Winkler and Sirk. Memberships were either for a full year or a term. Annual members were allowed to bring three guests. This initial program covering 32 nights was a huge success. We extended the program by a further 14 nights in November and December by adding a package of Universal and Paramount films that the NLFLC had recently purchased on 16mm: “The Hollywood Stylists, the Golden Years of Universal and Paramount.” In 1985, the programming followed the previous year’s successful model and consisted of three terms starting in February and finishing at the end of November. Once again, we printed a card (slightly larger than A5) with only film titles, years, dates and the names of directors, alongside a carefully collated program booklet. But because of our huge success in 1984, we screened most films twice, at both 3:30pm and 7:30pm. Still, most of the films came from the French and German embassies along with the NLFLC, and all screenings were on 16mm. The list of directors profiled was similar to 1984, but this was expanded to figures like Ayten Kuyululu, Monte Hellman, Sophie Turkiewicz, Ken Jacobs, Max Fleischer, Liliana Cavani, Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Alexander Kluge, Michael Lee and Georgia Wallace-Crabbe (the last two introducing their films). The program that year profiled an incredible assortment of women filmmakers. Silver City A very important event occurred in April 1985. The Cinémathèque was asked to co-present, with the Australian Film Institute (AFI), a program of German silent film prints imported by the Goethe-Institut from the Berlin Film Archive. This selection was supplemented by some prints from the NLFLC and screened across four nights. Most of these films were on 16mm but there was an important component of 35mm prints. The Glasshouse didn’t have 35mm, but somehow, we sourced a portable projector, possibly from MFF. We thought the problem was solved but when Eva Orbanz, who had curated the program and worked at the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, saw the portable 35mm equipment she freaked out. The prints were archival, and she had great concerns about the projector being able to screen the films without damaging them. Little did she know that the projectionist didn’t have much experience screening 35mm either, but we ignored this small issue. There was no other real alternative. I was very apprehensive but. fortunately, the screenings went off without a hitch. Future collaborations were formulated with the AFI and the Goethe-Institut, arrangements that would work to the mutual benefit of all three organisations. 1986 was similar to the previous two years but with an increased number of screenings. Now beginning at the start of February – as we do today – there was only one week off between the terms, with the program finishing in mid-December. However, there was an important addition, monthly screenings of 35mm prints at the State Film Theatre on Monday afternoons and nights. These took in a range of films including a night of works by and introduced by Melbourne writer, artist and curator Philip Brophy (another collaboration that would continue across a number of years). That year the accompanying program notes acquired a carboard frontpage, but they were still stapled in the upper left-hand corner. This was also the first year that featured a co-presentation with the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), introduced by Ray Edmondson, who was then the acting assistant director. Edmondson presented several archival shorts and two features: Raymond Longford’s The Woman Suffers (1918) and Franklyn Barrett’s The Breaking of the Drought (1920). On another occasion, director Leo Berkeley introduced a couple of his own shorts and also presented two of his favourite films: Jean Renoir’s Le crime de M. Lange (1935) and Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil (1948). Maria Ferro presented her new film, Lost Love (1985), and Brian McKenzie discussed his documentary, Winter’s Harvest (1980). We also screened two very rare George Miller films: Frieze: An Underground Film (1971, co-directed by Byron Kennedy), and the somewhat better-known, Violence in the Cinema: Part 1 (1972), both sourced from the NFSA. Winter’s Harvest In 1987 the program notes became properly covered and bound. We still printed the yearly program on a card, but now screened from the start of February until almost the end of December (with a break for MFF). This is the model that continues to this day. Memberships were still offered yearly or across a term, but now we had four terms instead of three. Due to public demand, the main films were still mostly screened twice from 3:30pm and 7:30pm. The program also proudly announced the coming of two unspecified night seasons. I have no memory of these screenings and can find no record confirming that they actually took place. Earlier in the year, the then director of the AFI asked us how we managed to attract such large audiences with a program card that just listed dates, times, films and directors? It was a thought-provoking question. For the second term, we produced an A3 sheet that listed the term’s program and encapsulated notes for each film in a manner not unlike our current calendar. That year we held another program of films from the NFSA and had two directors introduce their work: Gerry Bell, introducing his new short, and Dirk de Bruyn presenting four of his experimental works including his brand-new feature, Homecomings (1987). Homecomings In 1988 we produced our first yearly A2-sized calendar and undertook our first collaboration with the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group featuring works by Bill Mousoulis, Anne-Marie Crawford, Fiona Trigg, Chris Windmill and others. And we held our first seminar, inevitably focused on programming. Sessions in the first half of the year screened at 3:30pm and 7:30pm, while during the second half of the year, when attendances dropped away (as they still do), films screened once only with a series of shorts at 6:30pm and the features at 7:30pm. Our AGM that year was held at the end of June, and Adrian Danks joined the committee for the first time (he was then student at RMIT). By the end of the year Adrian had become president. Ever since he has had a significant influence on the direction and programming of the Cinémathèque, as well as taking on the role of our most valued editor (including of this article). 1989 then followed a similar template with highlights including a NFSA program, a night of Super 8 works, and a retrospective devoted to Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, with the filmmakers in attendance. Practice of Filmmaking (Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, 1981) 1990 saw the name of the Program Notes change to Annotations on Film (in reference to the earlier MUFS publication). The booklet was now double the size thanks to financial assistance from the Australian Film Commission (AFC), and also included ten pages of advertising. The cover featured two sequential still frames from Dave Cox’s Monuments Far and Strange (1989), which screened later in the year. We began the year with a retrospective of Jane Campion’s shorts and began our mammoth chronological retrospective of the early work of D. W. Griffith (Parts 1-4). We also screened a program of Philip Brophy’s music videos and trailers (“An Evening of Present Records [1985-1989]”) followed several months later by the first of two slide lectures entitled “Trash & Junk Culture.” We also screened another night of collaborations with the NFSA and the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group (“It’s Not Just a Gauge, It’s a Just Gauge – Into the 90s”). Our program also included early shorts by Truffaut along with Godard’s 21-minute Charlotte et Véronique, ou Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick (All the Boys Are Called Patrick, 1959). These screenings were hugely popular and eventuated in SBS TV purchasing the rights to the titles and screening them. This was also the year that Quentin Turnour first joined the committee. He went on to become a dedicated, long-term member of the Cinémathèque team, especially notable for his love and support of Australian archival screenings. In 1991 the model persisted. The cover of Annotations on Film was created by artist Maria Kozic. Several further programs were curated with the NFSA (including a retrospective of postwar Australian animators Eric Porter and the Owen Brothers) and the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group. Philip Brophy presented the second part of his “Trash & Junk Culture” lecture series: “Identification & Titillation.” The Cinémathèque held two screenings in association with the Modern Image Makers Association (MIMA), showing a selection of material including the work of experimental filmmakers from New York’s The Kitchen, Dirk de Bruyn’s important new feature, Conversations With My Mother (1990), and films by Gabrielle Finnane, Michael Buckley and Mark Zenner. We also continued our epic retrospective of Griffith one and two reelers (Parts 5-7). Conversations with my Mother In 1992 the Melbourne Cinémathèque imported its first films, a significant harbinger of what was to come. This was a selection of shorts by Martin Scorsese which we imported on 16mm from New Zealand and were cleared for screening by Scorsese himself (who asked for a particular CD version of Bob Dylan’s Masterpieces only available in Australia and Japan in payment) and Kino International. This was then a much more onerous process. In those days it involved faxes and phone calls at midnight or 6:00am – or even letter writing – but you had to have the contacts and that wasn’t easy either. A decade earlier it was phone calls and attendance at festivals that made the real difference… that was even more difficult. And our retrospective of Griffith shorts continued… We collaborated with MIMA (a couple screenings of British avant-garde work at the Grierson Cinema in East Melbourne) and the NFSA, with director John B. Murray introducing his film The Naked Bunyip (1970). That year our collaboration with the AFI began in earnest and would have a great impact on our activities over the next decade. Our 1992 program was co-opted by the AFI to screen in Sydney six days after our screenings. Additionally, we were offered a package of seven films made by British filmmakers Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat (made available by the British Council). Assuming these would have limited appeal, we decided to save on costs by screening them at the Grierson Cinema (which seated around 100 people). However, there was a terrific response, especially for the Saturday screenings (the films being great nostalgic drawcards), and the start was delayed until the audience could be relocated to the much larger State Film Theatre. This response led into our next co-presentation with the AFI, which was a six-night retrospective of 35mm prints of the films of Vittorio de Sica (curated by Cinecittà and Ministero del Tourismo e della Spettacolo), accompanied by a seminar by highly respected film academic and Italian film scholar Sam Rohdie. The season was a great success, leading to more ambitious plans for 1993. The Naked Bunyip Theatrical Poster The Melbourne Cinémathèque at the State Film Theatre and the National Cinémathèque After the successes of 1992, and in need of a venue that could consistently provide 35mm projection, the Melbourne Cinémathèque moved to the State Film Theatre for our 1993 season. The cinema seated 240 people and was equipped with variable speed 35mm projectors able to screen archival material, 16mm variable speed equipment and video projection. Although we had weekly access to 35mm equipment, most of the prints screened were still 16mm and sourced in Australia. The main source for prints was still the renamed National Library Film & Video Lending Collection (NLFVLC), and the French and German embassy collections. Up until Easter most screenings began at 3:30pm with many films shown twice. From mid-April films screened once only, starting at 7:00pm. However, the most important shift was that the Melbourne Cinémathèque program was now being promoted and circulated as the National Cinémathèque and was screening in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Hobart and Brisbane. This Australian circuit was administered by the AFI and also had a national sponsor in Lindeman’s wines. To take advantage of the affordances of our new venue, we opened the year with a screening of Ann Hui’s Ke tu qiu hen (Song of the Exile, 1990) and a 35mm print of Wong Kar-Wai’s Ah fei jing juen (Days of Being Wild, 1990). The following week we screened Bergman’s Tystnaden (The Silence, 1963) and Nattvardsgästerna (Winter Light, 1963), both on 35mm. The Bergman double feature was preceded by the first of our fourth year of screenings Griffith shorts covering the years 1911 and 1912. We also premiered three animated leaders/trailers shot on 16mm for the Cinémathèque by David Cox. Unfortunately, these were attached to the heads of 16mm prints we were screening and have since been lost, one of the many casualties of the ephemerality of film exhibition. Chelsea Girls Theatrical Poster Lonesome Cowboys Theatrical Poster On March 12, back at the Union Theatre at the University of Melbourne, we screened 35mm prints of Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s Chelsea Girls (1966) and Lonesome Cowboys (1968) from 8:00pm while, for the hardcore Warhol/film fans, we screened Warhol’s magnum opus, Empire (1964), on 16mm from 8:00pm till 4:00am in the Café Lounge in the Union Building. This was made to be screened at 18 frames per second (fps), rather than the usual sound speed of 24 fps, but one of our two 16mm projectors was running very slowly. To avoid finishing even later, the film was occasionally projected at 24 fps, creating a truly unique screening of the film. We did eventually finish sometime between four and five in the morning, and many people (20-50??) stayed the whole night. I must admit, it was one of the highlights of my film watching life. The screening was held in association with the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney, MIMA and the Melbourne University Student Union. This was the world premiere of the newly restored print from the Whitney Museum of American Art. At the end of 1993 we also screened another very long film, Frederick Wiseman’s six-hour Near Death (1989), at a special screening held in December over two nights at the Erwin Rado Theatrette (see below). Another stunning highlight. In the intervening years, Adrian graduated from RMIT and became a media and cinema lecturer at the university. During 1993 one of Adrian’s fellow students, Clare Stewart, became involved. Her contribution and enthusiasm, along with significant funding over a number of years from the AFC, helped promulgate the huge burst of activity that followed, especially in 1995, the centenary year for film. In 1994, the National Cinémathèque program further expanded, venturing also to Canberra and Adelaide. From 1976 until 1993 I had pretty much been the sole programmer (apart from 1980 when Peter Nagels did much of the programming and a few things put together by Adrian in the early 1990s). In 1994, Adrian began programming with me, and we were joined a couple of years later by Quentin and Clare. Since that time there has always been between three to five people on the programming team, with occasional assistance from others. Highlights of the program included three nights dedicated to “Lightworks,” curated for the MCA by British writer and curator David Curtis, who was in attendance. It focused on experimental works highlighting the properties of projected “light” by Oskar Fischinger, Man Ray, Pat O’Neill, Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Len Lye, Dirk de Bruyn, Bill Viola, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, James Whitney and Derek Jarman, amongst others. We also held the world premiere (outside of France) of episodes 3 and 4 of Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma (1994), and finally imported our second overseas print – from New Zealand once again – Errol Morris’ first feature, Gates of Heaven (1978), the film that forced Werner Herzog to eat his shoe. Les Blank’s film documenting this, incidentally, had screened several months earlier in our program. We again presented programs with the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group and the NFSA (“The Golden Years of Australian Television: Sitcoms Galore”). Also, our ongoing Griffith program rolled into 1913. Finally, 1995 arrived and with it the centenary of cinema. The National Cinémathèque also continued. The calendar looked very similar to the previous few years, although the first six weeks of screenings were held at University of Melbourne due to the increased popularity of the Cinémathèque program and the larger capacity of the Union Theatre. But there was a greater emphasis on history in the program: a two-part program of silent animation, a four-part retrospective celebrating 50 years of the Commonwealth Film Unit, and “L’Années Lumière” (“Lumière’s Century”) – a three-night festival of the history of French documentary filmmaking dating back to the silent era and screening a terrific combination of excellent 16mm and 35mm prints. We also took another small step forward with our first importation of a 35mm print: Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993). This provided an appropriate tribute to both the late filmmaker and the powers of projected light and sound in cinema’s centenary year. But there was much more. In November 1994, we had initiated another, more thematic programming strand called the Other Cinéma(thèque), which screened in Fitzroy at the much smaller Erwin Rado Theatrette. The first season screened from December until February 1995 and consisted of ten Taiwanese features supported by a retrospective of Lindsay Anderson’s early work and a number Australian shorts. This thematic program was then followed by four nights of American silent films. In July-August there was an additional ten sessions of the “L’Années Lumière” program at the Erwin Rado Theatrette on Monday nights and the Grant Street Cinema (at the Victorian College of the Arts) on Thursday nights. The VCA program also expanded to include a night of Latina films, a program of experimental Super 8, 16mm and video works curated by Steven Ball, and a night of film school films from around the world. Additionally, in collaboration with MIMA, we hosted the legendary Canadian filmmaker Michael Snow, who presented four nights of his work (using his own personal collection) in March. June saw a unique happening at Club Axé with four Latin American and African-American films selected to accompany music themed nights. At the Erwin Rado Theatrette in May, we screened two films by Philippe Garrel previously unseen in Melbourne – J’entends plus la guitare (1991) and La naissance de l’amour (The Birth of Love, 1993) – in collaboration with a symposium on French cinema at the University of Melbourne. In August, we presented a special program at the Athenaeum Theatre, “Into the Limelight,” with “film buff” and actor John Flaus doing an interpretative reading of Henry Lawson’s 1899 story, “The Australian Cinematograph,” and film historian Ina Bertrand reading from “The Secret Diary of a Cinematograph Addict” – brilliantly concocted by Bertrand herself – all proceeded by a selection of films representing what would have been a typical Melbourne screening held by the touring Corrick family entertainers (from New Zealand) in around 1906. Finally, in September, in collaboration with the Japan Foundation, we screened two silent Japanese genre films with a soundtrack featuring a Benshi performance. 1995 was also distinguished by the Australian premiere of a 35mm film we had acquired, Jon Jost’s The Bed You Sleep In (1993). But there no D. W. Griffith shorts programmed in the anniversary year! Cantrills Filmnotes (1996) Again, we were back at University of Melbourne for the first six weeks of 1996, followed by nine weeks of varying start times between 2:30pm and 7:00pm at State Film Theatre. We held a Cantrills Filmnotes 25th anniversary special with the filmmakers in attendance, and a Michael Buckley retrospective, also with the filmmaker there. There was a short program of horror films made under the auspices of the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group preceding a Frankenstein double bill from Hammer Film Productions. We also imported our second 35mm print: Patrick Keiller’s London (1994) from the British Film Institute. The final part of the Griffith retrospective also screened, concluding with two of his best early works, The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) and The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1913), his final short before the more ambitious feature length Judith of Bethulia (1914), which we had screened just prior to beginning this long running retrospective in August 1988. There were other silent films shown that year as well. Many of these had been compiled for centenary screenings overseas but hadn’t made it to Australia. This was perfect material for the Other Cinéma(thèque) screenings, at the Erwin Rado Theatrette, screening them under the moniker “The Dawn of Cinema” (named after a conference held in Sydney that year, which a number of the programmers attended) from April till November. This included: the curated programs “Before Hollywood” organised by Jay Leyda and Charles Musser, including films from five major US film archives; “Before Caligari,” presented in association with the Goethe-Institut; and “Georges Méliès, a World of Fantasy,” presented in collaboration with the MCA. This was supplemented by a silent program from the NFSA, “Australia Before 1915,” along with more early French cinema in programs devoted to “Actualities, Trick and Illusionist Films,” and “Chase and Gag Films.” Further support was provided through examples of early Italian and Danish cinema. In a change of pace, the Other Cinéma(thèque) also showed a program of recent works from the London Film-Makers’ Co-op, two programs of the “Best of the Oberhausen Film Festival” and another retrospective, beginning in March and concluding in December, “Diverging West.” This consisted of one screening a month of westerns that defined and exceeded the boundaries of the genre, providing a fascinating intersection with the “Before Hollywood” season. Undercut (1986) If that wasn’t enough, there was another important development in 1996. With the growing concern about copyright infringement, along with the desire of some committee members, it was decided that from 1996 all Annotations on Film articles would need to be original material. Producing an annual selection of original film reviews was considered impossible, so it was decided to subdivide the process into a quarterly journal of reviews by local writers called CTEQ: Annotations of Film. This worked well but was a very expensive printing exercise and also labour intensive. After the first year of publication, another solution needed to be found. In 1997, the National Cinémathèque remained very solid. For the first time, two dedicated seasons appeared in the regular yearly calendar. One was our most ambitious to this time in terms of the sourcing of prints: “Trouble in Paradise: The Films of Ernst Lubitsch.” This was assembled for us by the Goethe-Institut and also imported by them. The selection was made by us with three German films and three American films, all on imported 35mm prints. Two of the American films came from major archives: the National Film and Television Archive (UK) and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. These were possibly the first archival prints we had ever borrowed from overseas, but other archives were to follow in fairly quick succession including the Library of Congress, Filmoteka Narodowa, Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv and the München Filmmuseum. There was also an additional 16mm German short which was a recent acquisition attained by the NLFVLC: Ich Mochte Kein Mann Sein (I Don’t Want to Be a Man, 1918). A 24-page monograph was printed for the season with four articles by critics and academics, two based in Australia (William D. Routt and Peter Kemp) and the others in the US (Sabine Hake and William Paul). Music for a couple of the silent films was provided live by Bruce Ardley on piano. The screenings were a huge success. The other, somewhat unofficial season consisted of two nights of Mario Bava films screening a month after the Lubitsch season. But I’m overlooking the Other Cinéma(thèque) in this account. We screened an extensive John Ford season at the Grant Street Cinema consisting of 22 films shown over ten nights between March and June. This included 19 features and two shorts directed by Ford as well as Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 documentary dedicated to the filmmaker. “Straight Shooter – A John Ford Season” was, and still is, by far the largest retrospective of any director the Cinémathèque has undertaken. A solution was also found in relation to CTEQ: Annotations on Film. Articles were to be printed as a supplement for the next three years in Metro, the journal of the Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM). Additionally, issue 110 of Metro contained a special dossier on Mario Bava, highlighting the two Cinémathèque screenings and including articles by Luc Moullet, Tim Lucas, Raymond Durgnat and Stefano Della Casa. In 1998, the impetus for more dedicated seasons grew. We had three. “Treasures From the French Embassy Collection” was essentially a four-week promotion of the embassy’s collection spotlighting a number of their most significant titles as well as prints that had only recently come back into circulation. Featuring films by Bresson, Carax, Clouzot, Duras, Godard, Melville and others, it was also accompanied by a high-quality publication featuring new writing. More significantly, we also scheduled one of the most successful seasons we have ever undertaken, again in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut. This consisted of four programs of the films of Fritz Lang, which screened one afternoon at the State Film Theatre and three nights at the Astor Theatre in St Kilda. Six films, all 35mm. These included: Die Nibelungen (1924), running nearly four hours and with a live score played by David Johnson; and Metropolis (1926), which attracted an incredible audience of over 800 people to the Astor, our largest ever attendance. The other three titles, all sound films, were from the BFI National Film and Television Archive. Again, we produced a monograph running to 32 pages featuring articles by William D. Routt, Leonie Naughton, Tom Gunning and Douglas Pye. The third season we screened was a Chris Marker retrospective – “Voyages of an Eccentric Artist: The Films of Chris Marker” – held over two nights and including specially imported recent video work. This was augmented by a symposium on the following Sunday presented by RMIT’s Media Studies program with Adrian Miles, Adrian Danks and others discussing Marker’s work and legacy. We also imported another film 35mm film print from the British Film Institute, Patrick Keiller’s Robinson in Space (1997), his follow up to London. Importations would now begin in earnest. During the year the State Film Theatre also rebranded itself as Cinemedia at Treasury Theatre in anticipation of its relocation to Federation Square in the coming years. 1999 was the 50th anniversary of MUFS. An exhibition was mounted in the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne from 19 July to 6 August. This was curated by Quentin Turnour and Windsor Fick in association with the University of Melbourne Archives. To celebrate there was also a four-part screening series (with further screenings planned elsewhere and on other nights), “Carlton & Other Suburbs,” featuring the work of MUFS filmmakers and alumni including Colin Munro, Barry Humphries, Brian Davies, Dave Minter, Alan Finney, Peter Carmody, Anthony I. Ginnane and Leo Berkeley. This further extended to a two-week season of the films of Gil Brealey, the most renowned of MUFS filmmaking alumni, presented with the NFSA. The number of seasons expanded. Another offering of “More Treasures From the French Embassy” built on the previous year’s success over four nights, exhibiting works from Chabrol, Duras, Godard, Melville, Rivette, Renoir, Rohmer, Tati and Varda. Although we did routinely screen silent films with pre-recorded music, in June 1999 a new live music score commissioned by the Melbourne Cinémathèque for Murnau’s Faust (1926) was premiered by The Ang Fang Quartet. The Goethe-Institut supplied two seasons, with the first being a pre-packaged selection of the works from film essayist Hartmut Bitomsky, with visiting German film critic Hans Günter Pflaum introducing the season and two extra nights of films at the Grant Street Cinema. The second collaborative season was meant to profile the films of G. W. Pabst, but this was replaced by “Imitating Life: The Films of Douglas Sirk,” which screened at the Classic Cinema in Elsternwick on imported 35mm prints. This consisted of three night sessions and two weekend matinees split between Sirk’s American and German work. This was the first imported season to be wholly curated by the Melbourne Cinémathèque. This was quickly followed by our second season of imported prints: “Life Forces: The Swedish Cinema of Bergman, Stiller & Sjöström.” Later in the year we were also offered a session with visiting critic Geoffrey Nowell-Smith discussing Ophuls’ Madame de… (1953), followed by a screening of the film. Meanwhile, CTEQ: Annotations on Film appeared for the final time in Metro magazine in late 1999. At the end of the year a new online Australian film journal appeared, Senses of Cinema, and a decision was made to shift our annotations to this more accessible avenue for publication. Almost 25 years later, CTEQ is still appearing in Senses of Cinema (as does this article), and this collaboration has enabled our readership, international reputation and pool of writers to increase exponentially. Spies Theatrical Poster 2000 was another great year for the Melbourne Cinémathèque. In March, Fassbinder’s monumental television series, Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), screened in three parts across the State Film Theatre and the Grant Street Cinema (it was a great tonic for the horrible sounds of Melbourne Formula One Grand Prix being held nearby over the same weekend). Also in March, Kristin Thompson, film scholar, Egyptologist and author of Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood, introduced a screening of Die Augen der Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy, 1918), while in April film critic Adrian Martin gave an extensive introduction to a screening of Lang’s Spione (1928). In September, The Ang Fang Quartet returned with another magnificent new score for Murnau’s Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922). The Goethe-Institut once again offered great support across three programs: “Short and Sweet: Short Films from Germany;” a Frank Beyer retrospective screening across one week over four nights; and the magnus opus, “Marlene Dietrich: A Foreign Affair,” solely curated by the Melbourne Cinémathèque, with an accompanying photographic exhibition held at RMIT and compiled by Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin. There were three other seasons that year: “Robert Bresson: Radiant Light,” presented with the Alliance Française and Centre National de la Cinématographie; “Akira Kurosawa: The Hidden Fortress;” and “Work Never Done: Australian Women Filmworkers,” presented with ScreenSound Australia (the then rebranded NFSA). All three seasons were wholly curated by the Cinémathèque. By the end of 2000, Canberra had withdrawn from the National Cinémathèque along with Brisbane, and the other state organisations started to feel less and less wedded to the overall program (which was a harbinger of the circuit’s eventual demise). But financial support from the AFC was still solid at this point and the federation would continue until almost the middle of 2006. The Man from Hong Kong Theatrical Poster 2001 saw our first presentation with the Melbourne International Animation Festival and REAL: Life on Film Festival, fruitful collaborations that would continue across several years. ScreenSound contributed to a couple of programs featuring Dogs in Space (Richard Lowenstein, 1986), The Love Letters From Teralba Road (Stephen Wallace, 1977), Body Melt (Philip Brophy, 1993) and The Man from Hong Kong (Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1975), and there were three seasons presented across the year: “Claude Chabrol,” in collaboration with the French Embassy Cultural Service, the Alliance Française and the Centre National de la Cinématographie; “Andrei Tarkovsky: Sculpting in Time;” and “Over the Rooftops of Europe: The European Musical.” Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat Theatrical Poster Body Melt Theatrical Poster 2002 saw the Asia Society join the ranks of collaborators and they helped present Asian films for a few years under the Cinémathèque umbrella, initially screening two King Hu films, a Thai film – Wisit Sasanatieng’s Fah talai jone (Tears of the Black Tiger, 2000) – and an archival Filipino film: Gilliw Ko (Carlos Vander Toloso, 1939). ScreenSound went all racy and showed a couple of softcore Australian features and shorts, along with the crime films Money Movers (Bruce Beresford, 1978) and The Siege of Pinchgut (Harry Watt, 1959). There were four seasons across the year: the four-week “This is Cinema: The Films of Jean-Luc Godard” retrospective; a selection of Soviet titles screened under the umbrella “Tarkovsky’s Heirs;” and a samurai-related season combining films like Masaki Kobayashi’s Joi-uchi: Hairyo tsuma shimatsu (Samurai Rebellion, 1967), Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) and Kenji Mizoguchi’s Saikaku ichidai onna (The Life of Oharu, 1952). We also screened the very popular “Shadows at the Edge: The German Noir Connection” season with the support of the Goethe-Institut. Siege of Pinchgut Theatrical Poster Money Movers Theatrical Poster But the big event of 2002 was the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s relocation from Treasury Theatre (previously the State Film Theatre) to the new Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Federation Square. We were the first organisation to screen in the new 390-seat cinema at the end of October, a double feature of Akira Kurosawa’s Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (The Hidden Fortress (1958) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. 2002 was also the year when Clare Stewart left our programming team to join ACMI as Head of Film Programs. She then left ACMI in 2007 to become the director of the Sydney Film Festival, before moving on to run the BFI London Film Festival in 2011. In 2023, she became the managing director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. By chance, Michelle Carey joined the Cinémathèque committee in 2002, becoming president, an invaluable part of the programming team, and then Artistic Director of Melbourne International Film Festival. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai Theatrical Poster The Hidden Fortress Theatrical Poster The highlights and details of this new era in terms of collaboration, scale and venue, will be discussed in Part II of this history, “The Melbourne Cinémathèque at ACMI,” to be published at a later date.
