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 BLACK TEST CAR
Yasuzo Masumura (1962) 95 mins – Unclassified 15+
Masumura’s hard-edged thriller about rival car companies who resort to espionage, blackmail, dirty dealing and sabotage to gain market dominance, is a coruscating vision of the excesses and ruthlessness of Japanese corporate culture during the “economic miracle” of the 1950s and 1960s. Sleekly shot in black-and-white ’scope, this is amongst the director’s most purely pleasurable, engaging and fast-paced films, managing to imbue its speed-driven images of sportscar “tests” and competitive masculinity with a dark ethos. With Jiro Tamiya and Eiji Funakoshi.
CTEQ ANNOTATION
Black Test Car
by Martyn Bamber
8:50pm KISSES
Yasuzo Masumura (1957) 73 mins – Unclassified 15+
Masumura’s stripped-back, youth-centred debut is a startlingly direct, nuanced and melancholy exploration of Japan’s alienated post-war generation, with a young man and woman (Hiroshi Kawaguchi and Hitomi Nozoe) meeting cute while visiting their respective fathers at the same prison. An important precursor to the Japanese New Wave, the film’s free-roaming style, relative lightness and penetrating social critique led then-critic Nagisa Oshima to declare that a seismic shift had occurred in Japanese Cinema.
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.