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

November 14

7:00pm – TAIPEI STORY
Edward Yang (1985) 119 mins – PG

This bracing portrait of urban isolation and modern malaise in a rapidly changing Taipei stars filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien and singer Tsai Chin (who would later marry Yang) as the middle-class couple whose relationship slowly disintegrates against the backdrop of a city caught between its new globalised modernity and traditional values. A key early work of the New Taiwan Cinema, Yang’s second feature sharply focuses on sociological observations and is imbued with a sense of loss and impending doom set amongst the neon lights and alienating urban streetscapes of the modern city.

Courtesy of the Cineteca di Bologna.

CTEQ ANNOTATION:
A City in Transition in ‘Taipei Story’ by Nick Bugeja.


9:10pm – THE TERRORIZERS
Edward Yang (1986) 109 mins – M

Yang’s third feature is his most enigmatic, metaphysical and explicitly dark film, weaving an elliptical tapestry of cryptically interconnected urban stories. Shot through with an aura of subtle menace, the film’s emphatic embrace of modernist ambiguity, startling imagery, fractured storytelling and black-as-pitch comedy presents a bracing challenge to conventional viewer sensibilities. The city of Taipei looms as an all-encompassing presence shadowing and constraining the characters. Yang subsequently admitted the film’s complex play with the real and the fictional was even a mystery to himself.

35mm print courtesy of the Taipei Film Archive.

CTEQ ANNOTATION:
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: ‘The Terrorizers’ by James Waters.

https://vimeo.com/19073375

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, Michelle Carey, Adrian Danks, Eloise Ross and Cerise Howard.

Supported by Screen Australia and Film Victoria.

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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