Opening the Archive

A book I bought earlier this year at the Il Cinema Ritrovato Book Fair in Bologna – a haven for cinephiles accompanying an annual festival that celebrates film history and that is a place of inspiration for academics, curators, historians and film lovers of all kinds – that defines “film curatorship” as “[t]he art of interpreting the aesthetics, history, and technology of cinema through the selective collection, preservation, and documentation of films and their exhibition in archival presentations.”¹

With the aspiration of becoming a curator – or at least of doing some curating at some point in the future – I joined the Melbourne Cinémathèque committee. This was in mid-2008 when I was 21 and just about to begin my Honours year in Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, and from then on, I can barely separate my adult life, or my life as a professional cinephile, from my time associated with Cteq (how I refer to the organisation in speech and text messages). One of these reasons is that through meetings, tasks and screenings, I have made new friendships while some established ones have continued to flourish. Another is that the Cinémathèque is so entwined in my life as an adult, and in my experience of Melbourne, that I’m often reminded of it when making my way around the city, whether through screening venues, meeting locations or other ephemeral connections. In one of my favourite books, Giuliana Bruno writes about films as cine-cities that we can traverse and explore as a sensorily expanded cinema.² Perhaps this works both ways.

When the editors invited me to be a part of this dossier, I had no idea what to write but felt that I must be a part of it. In what ways has the Cinémathèque influenced my life? A daunting challenge to think about and ponder. Impossible to list them all. Here are a few memories selected from nearly 20 years of attending, perhaps as a form of documentation, like curatorship.

2005

This is the year I started my undergraduate degree and the first time I have been able to come to the Cinémathèque. Looking at that year’s program nothing sparks my memory, so perhaps I didn’t make it to anything. I went to other films at ACMI quite often, but I still had so much to discover (and still do!).

2008

I went to see Jean Eustache’s La maman et la putain (The Mother and the Whore, 1973) in early September, completely unaware of its importance but very excited to witness a 220-minute film. A close friend of mine joined me and she and I were thrilled to see one of the women who, when undressing, was revealed to be wearing pantyhose with no undergarments. No doubt we went to Hell’s Kitchen for a few wines after the screening. As impressionable young adults, we secretly adopted the woman’s sartorial choice for some time after this.

2009

Often the best films I saw were those screened second on a double bill. I found this astounding; surely the first film, as the programming drawcard, was always the winner? In a double titled “Imagining India,” The River (Jean Renoir, 1951) screened. I didn’t think much of it (I barely remember it) but resisted the temptation to give up on the night. The second film was then unknown to me, a little something called Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947). Seeing that film changed my life, because it changed the way I thought about cinema.

2011

My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936) screened in a season of screwball comedies. La Cava was onto something when he apparently told Carole Lombard and William Powell to draw on their own personalities, because I fell in love with both of them.³ I laughed so hard that I went right home and ordered the DVD. This also happened in 2012 after the screening of Wild River. Lee Remick’s eyes were just too powerful. When it screened again in 2018, I introduced the screening with a story about Remick. In an interview on The Joan Rivers Show, Remick listed it as one of the films of hers that audiences didn’t much like at the time, but she loved it. As I claimed, us curators clearly had a kinship with her.

2014

In March, Isabella Rossellini was in town doing her “Green Porno” stage show. I was desperate to go, but Cteq was going to be in the middle of a Tarkovsky season of 35mm prints. I opted for Tarkovsky (I learned too late that I think he’s only fine), and I’ll always regret it.

2016

I think this was the first year I was fully involved as a curator, although I had done some work in that realm the year before. It seemed only natural then that the first work I really got to do as a curator was to program a Barbara Stanwyck season; her name had been on the list of potential subjects for a spotlight for a while (having last been profiled in 2005), but I got the distinct feeling that executive programmer Michael Koller angled for her specifically as a gift to me. We chose six films – four of these were imported 35mm prints – and I liaised with Universal in Los Angeles, the Academy Film Archive and the Library of Congress to get them. I wrote a piece on her for ACMI’s website. I appeared on national radio to talk about her! It was all happening.

Barbara Stanwyck in The Moonlighter

2020

The final session I attended before the lockdowns was a 35mm screening of Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg, 1931) at the start of March. Marlene Dietrich’s eyes were so alluring in close-up (as much as Remick’s). The ending floored me, as she applies lipstick in front of a firing squad. It was one of those perfect moments made possible only by a dark cinema screen, the magical alchemy of images flickering before you.⁴ After a rip-roaring season of Dietrich films – I recall discussions amongst the committee that it was the best-attended yet – we had to postpone the remainder of the year’s program. This included a three-week Apichatpong Weerasethakul season I had been particularly excited about. “Things will get better next year. Sending you strength and peace,” Apichatpong wrote me when I emailed him with the update. It’s arguable whether things got better, but we were able to screen the program in mid-2021. It was a treat.

Melbourne Cinémathèque Programs (2016 & 2020) 

2023

I was proud of many things during this year. One of them was screening What’s Up, Doc? (Peter Bogdanovich, 1972) and hosting Barbra Streisand in what was her first appearance on the Cinémathèque screen. 

Barbra Streisand in What’s Up, Doc?

2024

In January of this year, we held a small celebration for the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s 40th birthday – 40 years, a true landmark achievement, although the real history of the organisation goes back much further than that. On the day of the celebration – a coincidence that felt quite poetic – I also bought a house outside of Melbourne and moved from the city a month later. Luckily, I’m still close enough to attend screenings. 

Others on the Cinémathèque committee, and many amongst the dedicated membership, have experienced a much vaster span of time than I, and have no doubt seen many more changes. Significantly, I have been present as an audience member, nostalgic cinephile, historian and curator for the digital paradigm shift. We screen a lot of DCPs and digital formats now, as this is the way the world has gone, including for restorations, but where we can we still aim for analogue. I love the crackle of a 35mm print, the life held within it. In 2006, Laura Mulvey wrote that the concept of cinema’s ageing – a quality that I feel encompasses cinema’s life, cinema’s history – has “found substance in a more immediate, material and objective change as mechanical and chemical technology gave way, gradually, to the electronic and, more dramatically, to the digital.”⁵ In the preface to their second edition of Film Curatorship, published twelve years after the first, the authors discuss this shift and observe that “the hegemony of non-photochemical moving images is now firmly established.”⁶ But its aftermath resonates. This aftermath is felt in the filmmakers’ works, as the authors write, and in their own consumption. One of the ways and places this continues to be felt is in venues like the cinémathèques. 

The Melbourne Cinémathèque certainly isn’t the only venue in which to experience film history in this way in Melbourne – far from it – but without it I wouldn’t have so many rich memories, including the selection detailed above. I would have made a very different path to these cinematic discoveries. I’m glad I had Cteq to open that door wider for me. Let’s keep the archive open. 

Endnotes