Cirrus@Austlit

'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 argued– 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.' (Introduction) 

'In his account of the Melbourne University Film Society’s (MUFS) activities in the 1960s, Adrian Danks highlights the organisation’s facilitation of feature-film production. Through the help of the dedicated “Uni-Fed” fund and other sources, its members translated the paradigms of the nouvelle vague and auteurism – that they were promoting and developing through their critical writing and programming activity – into a local practice. The notable figures of this era who went onto to varied careers in the film industry include Peter Carmody, Lloyd Carrick, Alan Finney and Antony I. Ginnane.'  (Introduction)

'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).' (Introduction) 

'Undergraduate years are full of the excitement and wonder of working out where you are in your life. In undertaking your course studies, you are planning for your future, but with other activities, such as belonging to a student club, you are not thinking about its lasting impact. Yet, for me, my involvement with the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) had a larger, formative influence on the rest of my life. At the time, I wasn’t aware that this was an incredibly significant period in the evolution of cinephilia in Melbourne and across Australia.' (Introduction) 

'Somewhere at home I’ve squirreled away Melbourne Cinémathèque calendars dating back to 1999 – though this was not my sporadic first year of attendance, which was, I think, in 1997. Rather, 1999 was the first year I decorated a spot on the wall of a particular share house with one of these calendars, cueing me into attending thereafter with some regularity. For the years 1999-2007, that wall was in the bathroom of a tumbledown terrace house in Fitzroy which increasingly admitted indoors more and more of the great outdoors, accounting for the enduringly mildewy condition of several years’ worth of calendars. Nevertheless, they are prized possessions!' (Introduction) 

'In the beginning was… a whole year’s program, baldly listed as film titles and screening dates, tightly laid out in three columns on an A5 card.'  (Introduction)

'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.' (Introduction) 

'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.' (Introduction) 

'I’ve never kept a viewing diary, as I know many cinephiles do. But to some extent the Melbourne Cinémathèque has kept one for me. Browsing through some of their old calendars recently, I found I was usually able to remember which screenings I was present at, even when I couldn’t remember much about the films themselves.' (Introduction)