Dedicated to screening rare & significant films in their original format.

The Melbourne Cinémathèque is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run film society.

We hold screenings at The Australian Centre for the Moving image every Wednesday night for most of the year.

Admission is by membership, which can be obtained on a monthly or yearly basis.

NEXT SCREENING

March 27

7:00pm – LES BONNES FEMMES
Claude Chabrol (1960) 104 mins Unclassified 15+*

A surpassingly chilly, penetrating and stylistically adventurous film of four hope-filled Paris shopgirls and their misuse and abuse at the hands of charmless and dangerous men. Regarded as one of the very best of his 50 or so features by Chabrol himself, it represents an early apotheosis of his clinical fascination with pettiness, inhibition and foolish decisions. Despite its pitiless objectivity, Chabrol’s fundamental feminist leanings undergird the narrative. One of the greatest of all Paris-set location films, it co-stars Bernadette Lafont and Stéphane Audran.

35mm print courtesy of British Film Institute Archive

8:55pm – INSPECTEUR LAVARDIN
Claude Chabrol (1986) 100 mins Unclassified 15+*

The murder of a writer brings Jean Poiret’s charming detective – introduced a year earlier in the director’s Poulet au vinaigre – to a seaside Breton town only to discover the dead man’s widow is a former girlfriend. Chabrol, backed by his erstwhile team of collaborators – composer son Matthieu, cinematographer Jean Rabier, editor Monique Fardoulis, and actors Bernadette Lafont and Jean-Claude Brialy – effortlessly milks the genre tropes for all they’re worth and delivers one of his lightest and most engaging films.

ABOUT

The Melbourne Cinémathèque started out as the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) in 1948 and changed its name to Cinémathèque in 1984.

The Melbourne Cinémathèque aims to present films in the medium they were created and as closely as possible to screen films the way they would have originally screened (i.e. big screen, celluloid prints, not video or DVD).

Programmes include a diverse selection of classic and contemporary films showcasing director retrospectives, special guest appearances and thematic series including archival material and new or restored prints.

We have on occasion hosted numerous seminars featuring renowned film scholars such as David Bordwell, Adrian Martin and Ian Christie. We are also dedicated to providing new annotations on the films we screen via the CTEQ annotations, hosted as a part of the quarterly online film journal Senses of Cinema.

The Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered and membership-driven relying on support from individuals, foundations, corporations and government funding to maintain its high standard of excellence. If you would like to be involved, or to offer donations or sponsorship, please contact us.

Presented by The Melbourne Cinémathèque with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

Curated by the Melbourne Cinémathèque.

Curatorial Committee: Michael Koller, Adrian Danks, Eloise Ross and Cerise Howard, with Associate Curator Michelle Carey

Supported by Film Victoria, RMIT University & The City of Melbourne

NEWS

For all the latest news including program changes follow us via Twitter & Facebook.

MAY ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2018

NOTICE: The committee of The Melbourne Cinémathèque wishes to make some changes to our constitution, however, to do that we now have to conform to the model constitution in the 2012 Act, so a number of other changes are also required.

Here is a copy of the constitution with the changes on RED.

The Melbourne Cinémathèque Constitution 2018.

We wish to pass these changes at the AGM on Wednesday May 30, at 6:40pm.

Please read the RED stuff and consider. It won’t take long. Then come along to the AGM.

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