From the Union Theatre to the Glasshouse and Beyond: Exploring One of Melbourne Film Culture’s Pivotal Transitions

His name plagues me. Everywhere I go I can hear it. Whenever I ask somebody for information pertaining to the Melbourne Cinémathèque, it’s not long before his name pops up again. Although a dentist by trade, Michael Koller has been central to keeping one of the longest running film societies in Australia alive for 50 years. Since the start of his involvement in 1974, Koller has seen the organisation transition: from its celebrated status as the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) to the Melbourne Cinémathèque in 1984. He has also witnessed its shift from the Union Theatre and various other smaller spaces at the University of Melbourne to the Glasshouse Theatre (now known as the Kaleide Theatre) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT; 1984-1992), from the Treasury Theatre (State Film Theatre; 1993-2002) run by the State Film Centre and Cinemedia to its current home at ACMI in Federation Square (from late 2002 onwards, with a couple of years at the Capitol Theatre during ACMI’s renovation and the COVID pandemic). This article explores the period immediately before the foundation of the Cinémathèque as well its formative decade spent at RMIT. Focusing on the rich film culture of the 1980s and early 1990s, and drawing on a small selection ephemeral archive material, it contextualises the Cinémathèque’s program and considers its importance to Melbournians then and now. It draws on discussions with three key figures in the organisation: Adrian Danks (co-curator and president), Michael Koller (co-curator and executive programmer) and Marg Irwin (one-time committee member, treasurer and public officer).

Humble Beginnings

But first let’s head back to an earlier, formative moment in time. A trawl through the RMIT Australian Screen Research Collection (RMIT ASRC) now housed in and managed by RMIT University reveals a series of pamphlets, calendars, magazines and dossiers published by MUFS including their important tri-annual journal, Annotations on Film (timed to coincide with each term of the university). During the 1960s, it was one of the strongest and most popular clubs at the University of Melbourne, reaching a very large membership. It was also involved in the production of several features and shorts – amongst only a small number produced nationally during this time – including Peter Carmody’s Nothing Like Experience (1970) and Brian Davies’ Brake Fluid (1970). These will both screen in mid-December 2024 in a special program marking the Cinémathèque and MUFS’ anniversary year.

MUFS began in early 1949 as a student-led organisation operating under the auspices of the University of Melbourne. During the 1950s and 1960s, it was a fertile breeding ground for generations of devoted film buffs who eagerly explored post-World War II trends in European arthouse cinema, the emerging cinemas of countries like Japan and, increasingly, the legacy of classical Hollywood cinema and its various auteurs. One of the key principles or ideas that drove the society – and which had been famously expounded upon in the pages of French magazine Cahiers du Cinema and other overseas journals – was what then film critic François Truffaut called the “politique des auteurs.” Other critics and future filmmakers of the time like Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer also joined in the task of elevating the cinema to its deserving place as the “seventh art.” Through these French critics’ carefully weighed comparisons between directors like Alfred Hitchcock and artists in other media like Michelangelo, the nouvelle vague helped raise cinema to its rightful position as a serious and “equivalent” artform. Annotations on Film allowed for a local elaboration or inflection on these and other ideas. One such “annotation” from term 1, 1957 declares the society’s charter as the “cultivating of an intelligent appreciation of the cinema as an art form.” This publication continues today, as CTEQ: Annotations on Film, and is one of a number of activities and curatorial approaches that speak to the organisation’s continuity and dedication for well over 60 years.

MUFS was a particularly strong and robust organisation throughout the 1960s. As Danks notes, in the middle of this decade the organisation “boast[ed] around 2000 members.”¹ However, during the 1970s, it started to run into difficulties due to a range of factors, including the stipulation that Melbourne University student organisations had to have current students running their committees. Koller notes, as a result of this, “Melbourne University didn’t really want us to be on campus, as all those involved at that time [the late 1970s] were either graduated alumni or had never attended [the institution].” MUFS, along with other university film societies, was also waning in popularity amongst students, partly due to the rise of “new” forms of repertory programming elsewhere at cinemas like the Valhalla in Richmond (established by two Sydney friends, Barry Peak and Christopher Kiely). A quick glance into the archive of Valhalla calendars from 1979 reveals retrospectives of directors like Jacques Tati, Werner Herzog and Akira Kurosawa alongside its patented “cult” cinema-based programming aimed at a younger demographic. The significant emphasis on foreign language art-house cinema also suggests considerable crossover with the programming of MUFS.²

Valhalla progamme poster (1984)

Koller started his degree in dentistry in 1973, but didn’t initially have lots of friends at university. Arriving on campus, he wasn’t sure how to get involved with the student societies but had a strong passion for film nurtured during his childhood and adolescence. Koller grew up in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne where he became a member of the Mordialloc Film Society at the age of 16, going on to become its treasurer. His participation in the society was partly facilitated by his friend Michael Campi, who co-organised the monthly screenings and was a decade or so older.

By the late 1970s, significant and stalwart members of the MUFS committee also began to leave the organisation like Simon Cherny, Leo Berkeley and Marg Irwin. Koller finished his dentistry degree in 1977, remaining close to MUFS until he decided to go on a European holiday in September 1979. He asked a friend to help out by programming the Monday night screenings of 16mm prints to be held in the university’s Undergraduate Lounge. However, this was shifted to a Friday night program of European oddities and gems. A more significant issue concerning late-era MUFS was that a tightening of its budget and decrease in income meant the organisation was struggling to pay rental fees for 35mm prints. When Koller returned in 1980, the society was in a bad position financially. 

Any account of the decline of MUFS across this era also requires recognition of another crucial institution that was operating during this time and that can be seen as a direct competitor: the National Film Theatre of Australia (NFTA). As Barrett Hodsdon argues, “there was a correlation between the rise of the National Film Theatre of Australia (NFTA) and the decline of film societies in the early ’70s.”³ In fact, MUFS was the rare university film society that survived the 1970s. The first official screening of the NFTA (at least its New South Wales chapter) was scheduled to be held in August 1967 and comprised a one-week season of films directed by Josef von Sternberg – with hope that the director would attend. Sternberg did come to Australia that year but at the behest of the Sydney and Melbourne film festivals. Nevertheless, this season of films was then toured to Melbourne, Perth, Canberra and Brisbane. According to records, during the early 1970s, the NFTA’s membership grew to around 10,000 nationally. At its peak the NFTA “imported seasons [which] were screened in up to seven cities.”⁴ In 1975, the original director of the organisation, Rob Gowland, resigned his position and Bruce Hodsdon and Rod Webb (as executive director) took over the reins, helping to keep the organisation afloat until 1979. In 1980 the Australian Film Commission took over, in partnership with the Australian Film Institute, the NFTA soon after merging into the latter. It was in the shadow of the NFTA’s operations and programs, including the national model they developed and the reasons for their eventual and perhaps inevitable demise, that the next phase of MUFS’s evolution needs to be contextualised. 

New Beginnings

Yackety Yak

Across this period, the important role that John Flaus played in elevating Melbourne film culture and promoting particular screenings has to be noted. He was central to the development of the film and media programs at La Trobe University in the early 1970s, where he also taught. At the same time, he started to emerge as an important acting talent, starring in a diverse range of films including Dave Jones’ Yackety Yack (1974), John Ruane’s Queensland (1976), Chris Fitchett’s Blood Money (1980) and Albie Thoms’ Palm Beach (1980) – the first three of which screened during the Cinémathèque’s 90th birthday celebration for Flaus earlier this year. Most significantly for MUFS and the Cinémathèque, Flaus was also co-host with Paul Harris of the weekly radio program Film Buffs Forecast on popular community radio station 3RRR.⁵ During the early years of the show – it lasted 36 years on air before becoming an irregular podcast – the duo would spruik a wide range of films and events occurring around Melbourne and also highlight showings on television, enthusiastically encouraging listeners to seek out these viewing opportunities. The two were also instrumental in developing their own short lived periodical titled Buff, which published, at very low-cost, op-ed pieces, reviews and a relatively comprehensive rundown and rating of things showing across the week. They also went on to publish the weekly “Buffs’ Choice” in the Friday addition of Melbourne broadsheet, The Age.

“Film Buffs’ Forecast” (Buff, 1989)

Koller speaks to me about a specific occasion when Film Buffs Forecast’s ability to encourage and galvanise audiences helped shift the trajectory and popularity of MUFS. One Saturday in the early 1980s, Flaus enthusiastically promoted a MUFS screening of Carl Dreyer’s La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928). Koller remembers it specifically because MUFS “[was] getting 30 or 40 people along and suddenly 80 or 90 people turned up to the screening… we had people standing at the back watching [the film].” This screening of Dreyer’s film helped confirm the subsequent decision to move away from the University of Melbourne and find a new space that could cater for a larger and perhaps somewhat different audience. 

Through the assistance of John Smithies, who was then a lecturer at RMIT, Koller and MUFS were able to move to the new Glasshouse Theatre, which had 16mm and video projection facilities but not 35mm. At the time, the Glasshouse Theatre was a perfect space because it fitted around 180 people and was slightly more central for filmgoers as it was located in the CBD on Swanston Street near the State Library of Victoria. The shift required a change of name, with Koller prosaically explaining how that came about. There was, he says, a “film critic [Trevor Bergroth] from The Melbourne Times on the committee…which was a local rag [like CBD News] … who said [we should] call it the Melbourne Cinémathèque.” On a more considered level, this was also, of course, in homage to the Cinémathèque Française in Paris and figures like its co-founder, Henri Langlois. The name plainly hit a chord.

When I speak to Adrian Danks, who started to attend the newly constituted Cinémathèque around the time of its move to RMIT, he explains their programming was obviously informed – even if somewhat indirectly – by Langlois’ policy or ethos of showing “everything,” and provocatively placing varied films side by side. As Danks remembers: “there were so many experimental double features of films and shorts, where you would think… those are surprising films to put on together.” The pairing of James Clayden’s then very recent, low-budget Melbourne set neo-noir, With Time to Kill (1987), with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1947) – in term 3, 1987 – is a perfect illustration of such a startling juxtaposition. By placing such disparate films side by side, the society encouraged new ways of thinking about specific films and their place in film history as well as in relation to the contemporary moment.

Danks has been a pivotal member of the Cinémathèque team since April 1988. He “first attended the Cinémathèque for the 11th of April 1984 screening of Joseph Losey’s remake of Fritz Lang’s M [1951],” just a couple of months after it had moved to RMIT, and immediately fell in love with the organisation.⁶ Sometime later in 1988, after RMIT suggested it would be helpful to have one of its students take on an executive role in the organisation, Danks, who by then had started a second degree in Media Studies at RMIT, became President, ending up serving in the position until 2006 (before making a “comeback” in 2024). This was, of course, an era when universities were more open to collaborations with the wider public and grass-roots organisations, and offered solidarity for groups like the Cinémathèque, helping it to consolidate and grow its audience base.

Von Stroheim at the Sydney Film Festival, June 1967

Trying to make sense of this ephemeral history, I peruse the contents of a large bundle of seemingly disorganised minutes that Danks brings to the RMIT ASRC one afternoon. Glancing over old budgets and correspondence, as well as some president’s reports and minutes, I land upon the committee oaths for 1994. On the back of a tattered piece of paper I see the blue ink handwriting of various members of the committee, including long standing figures like Marg Irwin, whose membership and involvement dates back to the era of MUFS. In block font it states her address and her wish to be on the committee along with two signatures of support. 

Irwin was a young student when she became involved with MUFS in 1973 and notes the different trajectory the organisation took when it moved to RMIT. She “noticed the Glasshouse attracted quite a different audience… with a more commercial orientation.” The theatre itself beckoned a new era for the Cinémathèque and Irwin evocatively describes the neon tube lights on its windows. During the early days of the Cinémathèque at RMIT the committee members still manned the ticket box and did their own ushering – the latter practice carrying on to the State Film Theatre. When Irwin signed her committee membership application in 1994, she was renewing her vow to participate in a culture she had been part of for over two decades, the kind of commitment necessary to keep the organisation running when so many others had and have folded or disappeared. Irwin notes that during this 20-year period she had sometimes been president and at other times secretary, illustrating the importance of sharing and taking on roles across the volunteer-based member-elected committee. When speaking about the contrasts between the two eras, Irwin notes that during the days of MUFS they used to “collect films on their push bikes and screen them in the Undergrad Lounge.” Those on the committee running the projectors had to earn their 16mm licence, which they got at RMIT.

In 1981, MUFS began to refashion the program notes – then largely excerpted from pre-existing articles, books and film reviews – that accompanied the films screening. At this time, they were repurposed on A4 sheets that were printed and stapled and sold for $2 at screenings. As I gaze at the photographs Koller supplies me of these bespoke program notes, I see how glaringly indicative of the times they are. For example, the 1982 edition features two provocatively juxtaposed images of women, albeit with entirely different connotations, on its cover. The top image is a still from Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa vie (1962) featuring a closeup of Anna Karina – whose character, Nana, is a sex worker – in the tight embrace of a man whilst exhaling from a cigarette. Underneath this image is a still taken from Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel’s Un chien Andalou (1929) showing the exact moment when a woman’s eyeball is seemingly sliced by a razor.

Melbourne University Film Society Programme Notes (1982)

While perusing the 1983 calendar, my eyes are drawn to a screening that pairs Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1967) with Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Le vente d’est (Wind From the East, 1970) and Tout va bien (1972) on June 9. There’s also an Australian underground night devoted to Bert Deling’s (who was once an important MUFS member and contributor in the 1960s) Pure Shit (1975) and Albie Thoms’ Palm Beach (1980). Koller goes on to note that the first auteur-driven seasons held after the move to the Glasshouse and the birth of the Cinémathèque “were Sirk and Wilder because the National Library [the key source of film prints in this era] had bought a whole batch of Universal films”, screening in late 1984. This reflected an open-door policy of showing a wide range of the extraordinary trove of old and new prints that were bought by the National Library of Australia during the 1970s and 1980s. Around this time, the society also screened “a series of German films from the Goethe-Institut like early silents.” In many ways, the shift to RMIT and the Cinémathèque marked a continuation of the curatorial ethos of MUFS – as evidenced by the programs noted above – and a shift to a broader range of films and collaborators (such as the Modern Image Makers Association, the National Film and Sound Archive, the Goethe-Institut and the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group).

Super Eight: Newsletter of the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group (1991); M.I.M.A (1989)

These program notes, whilst slimmer, thinner and more cheaply produced, were a continuation of the Annotations on Film that had been published in one form or another since MUFS’ glory days. Fifteen or so years later, these program notes would evolve into a close collaboration between the Cinémathèque and Senses of Cinema, with the weekly annotations gaining a global writer’s base and readership across almost 25 years. These humble stapled together booklets were replaced by a more substantial A4 booklet in 1985. In 1987-88, some money from the Australian Film Commission enabled the production of a 150-page bound volume covering the year’s screenings, also relying on excerpted material but more professionally produced.⁷ In their numerous incarnations, these “annotations” provide an important link to the history of the organisation and provide a lasting record of its screenings and wider activities. 

Contextual Underpinnings

Medium specificity has provided a challenge and point of argument for cinephiles since the birth of cinema. These days, there are often debates about one’s preference for watching an archival 35mm print over a new digital restoration and the various formats and file sizes related to that. The 1980s was a very different time that saw a key battle between screening and watching titles on film (even if 16mm) and the rise of home video. Reflecting on this era, Danks notes that “often films that were shot and meant to be screened on film were mostly consumed on video. The 1980s are a curious period in terms of what the rise of video then meant for repertory cinema.” Furthermore, Koller notes that “the underground [and the rare] then became more readily available along with more low-budget horror and schlock (video nasties), some of which did also screen commercially.” He adds there was “a growing awareness of Bava and the Giallo filmmakers [amongst others]” because of this increased availability and, in Australia, the launch of SBS television. The impact of video led to both the wider circulation of many types of films and an increasing awareness of the byways of film history. The Cinémathèque’s programming in its wake – and later the arrival of DVD, Blu-ray, streaming and downloading – reflects this appreciation of a much wider range of national cinemas, genres, types of filmmaking and auteurs (of various kinds). While today the Cinémathèque is dedicated to screening films, where possible, in their original format (film prints) or new restorations, medium specificity continues to define the organisation’s programming with its mix of digital restorations and archival 16mm and 35mm prints.

Postif Revue de Cinema (November 1976); Melbourne Film Bulletin 2 (April 1968); Film Journal 3 (1956); Cahiers du Cinema (March 1964)

Cinephilia is, of course, an ever-evolving thing, and its Australian incarnation has always been informed by international trends. But it has also responded in idiosyncratic and sometimes highly localised ways to these wider developments. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, it was from international film literature that the Australian cinephile often took his or her cue. This meant that the Australian cinephile was deeply influenced by the cultural and critical agendas of British magazines like Sight and Sound and Movie, French magazines like the Paris-based Cahiers du Cinema and the Lyon-centred Positif, along with the influential writings of someone like Andrew Sarris. The various publications produced by and around MUFS during this time – such as Annotations on Film, Melbourne Film Bulletin and Film Journal – reflect these influences as well as reveal how this local context provided particular inflections.

Due to an increased abundance of audiovisual media, cinephilia looked quite different by the time the Melbourne Cinémathèque arrived. There were many video stores that had popped up across Melbourne, SBS had commenced screening (in 1980) an extraordinary range of international cinema from the past and present, and ironic, blankly postmodern approaches to popular art, including cinema, had become a significant trend (evidenced by an unwanted cynicism of some audiences who would come to laugh at some of the old films). This almost irrefutable swing towards the garish and even the camp – that mainstream cinema and repertory theatres like the Valhalla championed – was both explored and combatted in the Cinémathèque’s programming over the course of the 1980s. Yes, the regulars are there like Jean-Pierre Melville, Robert Bresson and Howard Hawks, but it also caters for more eclectic and esoteric audiences seeking out the formalist works of Michael Snow alongside cartoons by Dave Fleischer such as Betty in Blunderland (1934). This is reflected in the eclecticism and scope of the Cinémathèque’s programming across this era which embraced and incorporated a wide range of films and experiences, including, but hardly restricted to multiple films by Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Powell and Billy Wilder, examples of early Australian television, feature screenings of prominent experimental filmmaker Dirk De Bruyn, endless programs devoted to early D. W. Griffith shorts, genre films like Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive (1973) and It’s Alive Again (1978), programs devoted to local super 8 filmmakers, all of Jane Campion’s early work and Philip Brophy’s memorable “Trash and Junk Culture” lecture series. 

Transitions

“Jane Campion” Ronin Films; “Trash and Junk Culture” Phillip Brophy (1988)

Another important development during this transitional era was the foundation of the National Cinémathèque in 1993, coinciding with the parent organisation’s move to larger premises. The National Cinémathèque ran concurrently with the Melbourne Cinémathèque and was also programmed by its curators, while being administered and toured by the Australian Film Institute. The Melbourne Cinémathèque received an annual fee for curating this program. This circuit helped subsidise international shipping fees and allowed the Melbourne Cinémathèque to provide a broader and more diverse program, sometimes being able to source prints from overseas (which is now the dominant practice). The locations of the National Cinémathèque were spread across Australia: Melbourne, Perth, Hobart, Brisbane and Sydney (with Canberra and Adelaide joining in 1994). Speaking of the relationship between the National and Melbourne Cinémathèques, Danks explains: “the National Cinémathèque had those other venues, and we could amortise the cost. So, when you’re bringing a print in from overseas, the freight is not as expensive because four different places are showing the film, and you can also further negotiate the cost of rights: What reduced rate can we have as a result of that?” However, the Melbourne Cinémathèque was careful not to become reliant on this income, regarding this as a specifically curatorial and potentially ephemeral partnership (it lasted longer than expected but ceased in the middle of 2006). Many other organisations have become reliant on funding from government bodies, which would invariably and inevitably be withdrawn at some stage. A key to the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s success has been maintaining its independence where at all possible while collaborating with various organisations.

With the imminent establishment of the National Cinémathèque, and the strong foundation forged during its time at RMIT, the Melbourne Cinémathèque believed it was time to move cinemas. This prompted a discussion with the State Film Centre to relocate to its cinema near Parliament. Speaking about the Cinémathèque’s decision to leave the Glasshouse Theatre, Danks assures me it wasn’t because it wasn’t doing well. In fact, he thinks RMIT probably didn’t want to see it go. But Danks explains a few important factors such as the largely non-RMIT management of the society and the increased size of the State Film Theatre, which had 240 seats and could screen 35mm, 16mm, super 8 and video. It was also a venue the organisation had used intermittently across the previous decade, including a full subsidiary program of 35mm prints in 1986. In this light, it is important to remember and acknowledge the foundational first decade of the Melbourne Cinémathèque and the highly varied, even transformative programs that were screened at the Glasshouse.

The Melbourne Cinémathèque is a special organisation that has continued to run for 40 years after its transition from MUFS. It has cultivated generations of cinephiles and has helped maintain a healthy film culture in Melbourne. Speaking of its importance, Koller notes that the Cinémathèque is “ostensibly a volunteer organisation, which means we keep the expenses right down, so we don’t need lots of funding to [continue to] exist.” The Cinémathèque’s robust “membership helps keep our finances healthy, and if the audiences [significantly] reduce, maybe it might be time to end operations. But we do very much want to keep going.” Given the critical junctures, changes and challenges the Cinémathèque has overcome, it’s an amazing achievement that it still continues to thrive and provide a cultivated space for filmgoers in 2024. Long live the Cinémathèque.

Endnotes