Melbourne Cinémathèque in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia | Non-profit organisation

Melbourne Cinémathèque

Locality: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Address: ACMI Cinemas, Federation Square, Flinders Street, Melbourne 3000 Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Website: http://www.melbournecinematheque.org

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25.01.2022 This week's Virtual Cinémathèque presents three formative works by KES and SORRY WE MISSED YOU director Ken Loach, unearthed thanks to Sixteen Films. Made during his tenure at 'The Wednesday Play', these lauded teleplays already display major Loach trademarks: His incorporation of factual elements and pseudo-documentary techniques, his focus on social issues including consumerism (THE END OF ARTHUR'S MARRIAGE), mental illness (IN TWO MINDS), and women's rights (UP THE JUNCTION), and, more than anything, his articulate and compassionate voice. Click below for access details, and join the conversation on Facebook or Twitter using #acmivirtualcteq

24.01.2022 Vale Michael Londsdale, seminal actor of the French New Wave and beyond, and an almost yearly sight at our screenings including THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1976) in 2015, THE LAST EMPRESS (2007) in 2016, and most recently THE BRIDE WORE BLACK (1968) in 2018. A huge, huge loss.

23.01.2022 The influence of art, on art.

22.01.2022 Virtual Cinémathèque returns this week with one of the most significant figures of early cinema and cinema culture, Jean Epstein. Traversing impressionism, realism, documentary, melodrama, modernism, and experimental narrative, the five works collected here include the formative LE TEMPESTAIRE (1947) and his eerie Poe adaptation THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928), made with assistance from Luis Buñuel. These restored prints have been made available online by, appropriately, La Cinémathèque française, who began their collection in the 1930s with one of Epstein's films. Click below for access details, and join the conversation with #acmivirtualcteq.

22.01.2022 "In going back to Poland I was able to tell stories in which history has a real impact on what people do... That is something I felt I could never do in England." Pawlikowski on his mother's love affair, far-right backlash, fake folk groups and thinking about filming in colour "for about half a day". We're currently presenting his IDA and COLD WAR as part of Virtual Cinémathèque. Screening details in the comments.

20.01.2022 That's a wrap on Virtual Cinémathèque. We hope our weekly movie nights with ACMI provided some respite during our closure and Melbourne's lockdown(s). We're now optimistically preparing for 2021, whatever it may look like. In the meantime many Virtual CTEQ programs are still available to stream for free: bit.ly/36QY6Kn

19.01.2022 Why restoration matters.

17.01.2022 Our friends at ACMI have re-launched their website, including completely virtual-fying their longstanding Screen Worlds exhibition as The Story of the Moving Image. Makes for some very good browsing ahead of Virtual Cinémathèque's return next week. Did you know, for example, that the clapper board was invented here in Melbourne?

17.01.2022 Virtual Cinémathèque will be taking a short break, returning on Wednesday 21 October. In the meantime, many of our previous programs are still available to watch/rewatch. What have been your favourites so far?

13.01.2022 "Reality provides you with the first lines of the story, but the writer... must write the rest to know what happens." Pedro Almodóvar, subject of last week's Virtual Cinémathèque, explains his creative process and how small moments in his life provide the spark for his most intense works. WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS (1984) and VOLVER (2006) are still streaming for free thanks to SBS On Demand. Link in comments.

06.01.2022 This week's Virtual Cinémathèque celebrates one of the leading voices of China's "Sixth Generation", Jia Zhangke. Thanks to SBS On Demand, we're presenting his exhilarating A TOUCH OF SIN (2013), and his subversive masterpiece PLATFORM (2000), unapproved by China's film bureau and made with the help of international production companies. Click below for details and join the conversation using #acmivirtualcteq.

06.01.2022 For this week at the Virtual Cinémathèque (the Melbourne Cinematheque's collaboration with our friends at ACMI) we celebrate another North American filmmaker whose work explores the byways, tangents and deep grooves of film history: Mark Rappaport. This program draws on recent video works by Rappaport included in a retrospective organised by the Filmmuseum München in mid-2020 we thank them for making these films available (but only until September 9). These playful video es...says examine a wide range of subjects but often coalesce around the legacy of classical Hollywood cinema. But the brilliance of Rappaport’s films is often found in their profoundly associational and speculative nature. Throughout many of these works the director’s attention is drawn to an extraordinary array of secondary figures, historical details, parenthetical asides and critical re-evaluations. Rappaport’s work brings together the powers of montage, the insights of film historiography, the passion of cinephilia, and the idiosyncrasies of personal taste and history. Please join us in celebrating the recent work of one of America’s truly singular and most profoundly independent filmmakers. We have programmed 6 of the 10 films available at the Filmmuseum, but would absolutely recommend watching all 10. We'll also include a link below to another recent-ish film available officially on youtube: THE EMPTY SCREEN (2017). You can also find links here to Adrian's notes for the program and a couple of other pieces including an excellent essay by Adrian Martin. https://www.acmi.net.au//virtual-cinematheque-mark-rappap/

05.01.2022 This week's Virtual Cinémathèque program dives into modern master Asghar Farhadi's work with actress Taraneh Alidoosti, presenting the psychological drama ABOUT ELLY (2009) and the meta-theatrical THE SALESMAN (2016). In these two award-winning works, which focus on narrative secrets and shifting points of view, Farhardi's style and Alidoosti's performances entwine to offer a window into the private, emotional landscapes of modern Iran. Click below for streaming details, and join the conversation with #acmivirtualcteq.

04.01.2022 If you're gutted that we're not able to screen our Osterns and Red Westerns retrospective as originally programmed for this month, then the Czech & Slovak Film Festival of Australia's unique hybrid drive-in/online 2020 festival will ease your Eastern European cinema cravings. Screening 9:00pm Wednesday 2 December at the Coburg Drive In Cinema is CHARLATAN (2020), the latest from 2011 CTEQ program and 2019 MIFF retrospective subject Agnieszka Holland. This isn't her first Czec...h work: she directed BURNING BUSH for HBO, and made her earliest shorts studying at FAMU in Prague. Meanwhile the online festival is available from 1-14 December, and includes two terrific retrospective titles: The stunning and seminal Stanisaw Lem (of SOLARIS fame) adaptation IKARIE XB-1 (Jindich Polák, 1963), and the satirical yet scathing comedy of a man's journey from triangle player to orchestral dictator, THE BARNABÁŠ KOS CASE (Peter Solan, 1965). The films were restored by the National Film Archive in Prague and the Slovak Film Institute respectively. Full program and tickets are available at http://casffa.com.au/

03.01.2022 Born in Poland, Pawe Pawlikowski abruptly migrated as a teenager to the UK where, over the next 3 decades, he slowly carved out a multi-faced career in TV and film, before returning to Poland in his mid-50s. He marked his homecoming with two seminal films exploring Poland's fractured past, presented as this week's Virtual Cinémathèque: IDA (2013) inspired by a Polish émigré he met in London, and COLD WAR (2018), inspired by his own parents. Available thanks to SBS On Demand. Click below for details and join the conversation with #acmivirtualcteq.

03.01.2022 Hi everyone, You may have seen the Victorian Government's announcement that cinemas in the state could reopen this last week to a capacity of 20 per cinema, which will then be extended to 100 per cinema from November 23, with a rule of one person per four square metres. Unfortunately, with both The Capitol and ACMI closed until 2021, we can't return to screenings this year. ... At this stage, we're cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to return to ACMI by late March, allowing for its reopening and other organisations' bookings prior to our return. This timeline is still to be confirmed and we'll let our members know closer to the date. As we mentioned in previous updates, all our memberships are being extended by the same number of screening weeks they would have missed before their expiry dates. But it's worth pointing out that, before we can reopen, we'll first need government restrictions to ease further. Because the Cinémathèque is membership-based and not ticket-based, even at 100 seats it isn’t financially sustainable for us to restart our program. This is, perhaps, a reminder of the value the Cinémathèque normally offers: an annual pass works out to roughly $2 per film. In any given screening, we would also want to fairly accommodate as many of our 500 (approximately) total members as possible. We're considering a booking model but this may need to admit more than one in five members (100 of 500) per screening to be fair and viable. Please be assured that we're in constant discussion with our venue partners at ACMI, and we are exploring a number of alternative models that will allow us to return to screening. We'll be sure to update you on any developments as soon as they come to hand. We can't thank you all enough for your patience and understanding. The Cinémathèque wouldn't exist without you, its members, and we want you to know that the committee is doing everything it can to resume screenings as soon as it is safe and possible to do so.

01.01.2022 "We’d get there late, and we’d just watch the last twenty minutes of the film... I was always wondering what was the first part of the film I’d try to make it up in my head." "That’s where I think filmmaking started for me." With The Criterion Collection, Iranian master Asghar Farhadi discusses his early moviegoing experiences and how his love of theatre's purity informed THE SALESMAN (2016), which screens this week as part of Virtual Cinémathèque.

01.01.2022 Born from the ashes of Franco's oppressive regime, Pedro Almodóvar's cinema pushed beyond the boundaries of sexual, political, and social conservatism. This week's Virtual Cinémathèque pits the blackly comic hedonism of his early work against his more mature, Sirk-and-Cukor-influenced later works, with WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS (1984) and VOLVER (2006). Click for screening details below, and share your thoughts with #acmivirtualcteq.

01.01.2022 This week at the Virtual Cinematheque (our collaboration with our friends at ACMI) we are profiling 2 powerful and timely documentaries that explore the relationship between the archive, racial politics and black power: Raoul Peck's I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO & THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975. As ACMI's Kristy Matheson says in her program notes for this week: "The idea of the archive itself remains widely contested who decides what we record, how the work's preserved (or not) who has access (or not). However as both these films show, the primary source is a powerful tool; giving voice to individuals and ideas that hold an enormous relevance to our contemporary lives." Hope you can join us. https://www.acmi.net.au//virtual-cinematheque-primary-sou/

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