Dedicated to screening rare & significant films in their original format.
Dedicated to screening rare & significant films in their original format.
The Melbourne Cinémathèque is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run film society.
The Melbourne Cinémathèque is a membership-based film society based in Melbourne, Australia.
We hold screenings at ACMI, Fed Square every Wednesday night for most of the year.
Admission is by membership, which can be obtained on a short-term or yearly basis.
We are a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organisation.
7:00pm THE OGRE OF ATHENS
Nikos Koundouros (1956) 105 mins – Unclassified 15+
Once voted the greatest Greek film of all time by the Greek Film Critics Association, Koundouros’ most famous work uses a familiar Hitchcockian story of mistaken identity to criticise post-World War II Greece’s culture of relentless political persecution. Scripted by the prominent playwright Iakovos Kambanellis, himself a survivor of the Mauthausen concentration camp, the film’s noirish atmosphere of fluid forms and illusionary spaces is enhanced by the lens of cinematographer Costas Theodorides (Stella) and the music of Koundouros’ close friend Manos Hatzidakis (Never on Sunday).
4K DCP.
9:05pm YOUNG APHRODITES
Nikos Koundouros (1963) 90 mins – Unclassified 15+
In 200BCE, nomadic sheepherders venture down from the mountains to a fishing village, where all the men are out to sea. Although almost all of the remaining women hide, a young girl and an older woman engage in different kinds of erotic and romantic interaction. A reworking of the classical tale of Daphnis and Chloe, Koundouros won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival for this controversially graphic and erotic observation of young lust and inevitable sexual violence, which Stanley Eichelbaum called “a ritualistic dance of love, hate, fear, lust and death”.
4K DCP.
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 Michael Koller, Adrian Danks, Eloise Ross, Cerise Howard and Andréas Giannopoulos for the Melbourne Cinémathèque
Subtitling Logistics: Lorenzo Rosa
Music Synchronisation: Michael Koller
Supported by VicScreen & RMIT University.
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© The Melbourne Cinémathèque
ABN 59 987 473 440
Supported by VicScreen, RMIT University & The City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program.