My Nights are More Beautiful Than Your Days: My Times with The Melbourne Cinémathèque

The Melbourne Cinémathèque had existed in my imagination well before I ever attended. Like many, I wasn’t sure if it was an actual place (a little piece of Paris’ Bercy in downtown Melbourne) or a night. 

I first encountered it in real life through its little sister, the Adelaide Cinémathèque, as part of the national circuit that was presented by the Australian Film Institute in the late 1990s. I would go every week, sometimes without even looking at what was screening. I was enthralled by the idea that you could see modernist European classics one week and a self-funded contemporary documentary from India or a Hong Kong action film the next. I loved all of it and was always buzzing on the ride home. I have many memories and discoveries from that era, including being asked to leave the cinema for laughing too much during L’âge d’or (Buñuel would have been proud). 

L’âge d’or

I guess it’s not an exaggeration to say that the Melbourne Cinémathèque changed the course of my life, as I decided on Christmas Day 2001 to move from Adelaide to Melbourne and had done so within two weeks. I signed up right away as a Cinémathèque member and also joined the committee. I also started with Senses of Cinema at this time, after meeting fellow Greek-Australian, the great Bill Mousoulis, at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) a year or two earlier. Both Senses and Cinémathèque are completely intertwined in my episodic memory professionally, chronologically and socially. 

Those early days at the Treasury Theatre stay with me the most. The cinema was always full, and I met so many people of all different ages and backgrounds who would become friends. Not least Michael Koller and Adrian Danks, who were the primary curators (with Quentin Turnour, at the time) of the Melbourne Cinémathèque. Both had intensive full-time jobs, and I was so inspired by their energy and dedication to film. They seemed a bit irascible and overly meticulous too, but this just made me like them more. But, of course, they turned out to be great people and film obsessive, the only sane way to be, I was convinced at that time.

I started attending the committee meetings, which were chaotic and went for hours and I couldn’t get enough. Just all this talk about cinema, history, film formats, archives; it was new but had somehow tapped into an impulse lying dormant inside me. Up until then I had watched lots of films, especially on SBS, the multicultural television station in Australia that often screened “world classics”. But here we became intimate with the actual material being of cinema. I was working at Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) at the time, which was (and continues to be) the main presenting partner and venue for the Cinémathèque, and I would always be excited to see the 35mm print cans arrive in the projection booth. On Wednesdays, something about the crackles and pops of those first few frames on the screen always excited me. That sound remains one of my favourite sounds.

I stayed involved with the Melbourne Cinémathèque for about 15 years or so, being less present over time as I had an intensive day job as the Artistic Director of MIFF from 2010, something that would not have eventuated, certainly, if it wasn’t for my time at the Cinémathèque. 

It’s hard to ever encapsulate the number of cinematic riches I encountered at the Cinémathèque. The programming over the years really has been diverse and its strengths have been silent cinema, especially from Germany (a passion of Michael’s), mid-century modernist European cinema (Adrian is an encyclopaedia on all things Melville, among others), plus Soviet and Eastern European cinema. I also appreciated seeing Warner Bros. cartoons, Australian experimental and independent cinema, unexpected documentaries and so many unclassifiable works. The fact the Melbourne Cinémathèque was set up as a film society allowed it to access the National Film and Video Lending Service (NFVLS), one of the most broad-reaching and adventurous 16mm collections in the world. 

Melbourne Cinémathèque Programme Calendar (2002)

The move to the newly created ACMI in late 2002, with its huge state of the art cinema felt strange (so modern, so big) at first, but it soon settled, and one could not lament those amazing seats. I liked to sit down the front – you’d think you would be cranking your neck to look up at the high, high screen but the seats would lean back – bliss! And there felt something suitably religious about looking up at the screen from there. I haven’t encountered this anywhere else in the world, this high screen, where you are leaning back and looking up. Something about it feels right in a body-posture sense. Why don’t more cinemas do this?

Federation Square Brochure

Anyway, I had had my darlings that I had seen on SBS or VHS, but there were other filmmakers I had struggled with until I saw them on 35mm, Miklós Jancsó being one of them. That season stands out for me, as well as those dedicated to Elem Klimov, Sergei Eisenstein, Japanese cinema of the ’50s and ’60s (often in colour-popping 16mm prints) and countless other masterworks. I also remember us running Garrel’s Le révélateur (1968) at the wrong speed and wondering why it was going on for so long. It was hypnotic to say the least and something I won’t forget….

Something happened in the mid 2010s, and there seemed to be an influx of a whole new generation of cinephiles in attendance (I remember noticing the same thing at MIFF). They couldn’t get enough of westerns, screwball comedies, martial arts films… and Fassbinder. It was a time of digitisation and corporatisation in cinema going and the not-for-profit Cinémathèque had been smart to keep the membership structure affordable and flexible, and to keep the 35mm flowing. From the perspective of ten years on and being on the other side of the world, I appreciate how special and unique it is. 

I also think of the time of my involvement, concurrently with that at Senses of Cinema, as one of having time to luxuriate in film, in discussion, reading, writing. It felt like a mecca for the shy and nerdy (as I definitely was). Though I could probably access any film, no matter how obscure, online these days, it’s not the same. There is something to be said for being the only game in town that everyone turns up for. 

Though now far away, I still keep up with the screening program and am impressed with how it has evolved (also to include more women directors and films from the global south, admittedly a weakness while I was there), while still sticking to its mission of screening the best of international and Australian cinema history, on film, where possible. I miss being there every Wednesday, seeing the familiar faces. 

Happy anniversary, dear Melbourne Cinémathèque, may you rule the Melbourne screens for another 40 years at least.