Arc Calendar March/April - National Film and Sound Archive

Cape Fear 

The Angels' Share 

Arc at the NFSA 

National Film 

and Sound Archive of 

Australia, 

McCoy Circuit, Acton, 

Canberra 

Enquiries: 

02 6248 2000 

nfsa.gov.au 

Enjoy cinema’s greatest experiences at Arc, 

the state-of-the-art venue at the National Film and Sound 

Archive of Australia. 

TICKETS: 

(except where special prices noted) 

Concession $11 / $9 

Max pass – 10 tickets for just $80. 

Matinees – all tickets $5 

Cinema’s Golden Summer screenings: 

$15 / $12.50 concession. 

Special ticket prices may apply to individual sessions, 

events and seasons. Booking fees may apply. 

The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole 

Doors open for 30 mins before screening. 

Admission to venue capacity only. 

No admission after the session has 

been running for 20 mins. 

Disabled access via Liversidge Street. 

Advanced general admission ticket sales are available 

from 9am Monday for the coming week’s sessions, 

either at the box office or a credit card purchase via 

telephone on 6248 2000. 

Tickets must be collected at least 15 minutes 

before the session or they may be resold. 

Tickets will only be refunded up to 20 mins 

after the commencement of the screening. 

Pre purchased tickets cannot be 

replaced if lost or stolen. 

March/ 

april 

nfsa.gov.au 

2013 

cineMacalendar 

THU 28 FEB 2PM 

CINEMA’S GOLDEN SUMMER 

aUSTralia’S GOlden SUMMer: 

MOVieS OF The TiMeS 

Total running time 85 minutes approx., 

16/35mm/digital, (E) 

Live accompaniment by Mauro Colombis. 

See www.nfsa.gov.au/arc for full details. 

Indigenous Australians are advised that this program 

contains the images of those who have since passed on. 

THU 28 FEB 7PM 


inGeBOrG hOlM 

(Trädgårdsmästaren) Dir: Victor SJÖSTRÖM, 

Sweden, 1913, 90 mins@18fps, 35mm, 

(unclassified 18+). 

Widowed shopkeeper Ingeborg tries to keep her late 

husband’s business and family together. The debts 

mount, the local charity bureaucracy is uncharitable. 

Ingeborg loses her home, children and eventually her 

sanity. Probably Swedish cinema’s first masterpiece 

was a devastating attack on the nation’s then 

social welfare system and in the vanguard of its 

political reform. Ingmar Bergman was inspired on 

seeing it to bring its director Victor Sjöström back 

to work in the 1950s, as both an actor (on Wild 

Strawberries) and creative mentor. Courtesy of 

Svenska Filminstitutet Filmarkivet. Preceded 

by the Kinemacolor film The Delhi Durbar (Dir: 

Charles URBAN, UK, 1911, extract 2 mins@24fps, 

35mm); plus Spencer’s Gazette: ‘The Hobart 

Carnival’ (Prod Co: Spencer’s Pictures, Photo: Ernest 

HIGGINS/Herbert WYNDHAM(?), Aust., 1910, 15 

mins@16fps, 35mm.) Live accompaniment by 

Mauro Colombis. 

March 

FRI 1 MAR 6PM 

SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS: OUr 

FirST FeaTUre? 

Total running time 45 mins approx. 

For decades, the Melbourne Salvation Army’s 1900 

Soldiers of the Cross was legendary in the annuals 

of Australian screen history, as our – and perhaps 

the world’s – first feature film. Film historians now 

understand that it was never quite that; that it was 

rather a complex ‘multimedia’ drama, combining 

lantern slides, music and live performance with no 

more than 13 minutes of film. But how it actually 

looked and sounded is still argued about. Dr. Martyn 

Jolly, from the Australian National University’s 

School of Art, looks beyond the social history, to 

what Soldiers of the Cross was as a popular media 

experience and a work of art. FREE session, 

bookings advised. 

FRI 1 MAR 7.30PM 


aTlanTiS 

Dir: August BLOM, Denmark, 1913, 116 mins@20 

fps, 35mm, (unclassified 18+) 

Damaged yet brilliant young bacteriologist von 

Kammacher (Olaf Fønss) loses himself in an erotic 

obsession with the self-absorbed dancer Ingigerd; 

a pursuit that eventual places the doctor on board 

a doomed trans-Atlantic luxury liner. Then freshly 

Nobel Prize-anointed author Gerhart Hauptmann’s 

novel was already sensational, having been published 

just weeks before the sinking of the ‘Titanic’ and 

with a plot that seemed to anticipate its tragedy. 

A recreation of the shipping disaster became an 

inevitable centrepiece of Nordisk’s deluxe adaptation. 

But director Blom also encapsulated the themes 

of Hauptmann’s novel: a sense of a greater, ‘fin de 

siècle’ cultural tragedy for European intellectual life. 

Courtesy Det Danske Filminstitut Filmarkivet. 

Preceded by A Day on a Trawler (Photo: Bert 

IVE, Aust., c. 1913, 8 mins@18fps, 16mm). Live 

accompaniment by Mauro Colombis. 

SAT 2 MAR 2PM 


SanTarellina AND FaTher 

Total running time 85 mins approx., 35mm, 

(unclassified 18+) 

Two milestones of early Italian feature film making, 

that are also something very different from its better- 

known historical costume epics. Santarellina (Dir: 

Marco CASARINI, Italy, 1912, 42 mins@18fps, 35mm) 

is a light and joyful frivolous romantic comedy; a 

‘commedia dell’arte’ tale of gender swapping and shy 

love staring Italian cinema’s Mary Pickford, ‘Gigetta’ 

Morano. His arrival honoured by a grand opera- 

style, ‘curtain call’, Italian stage superstar Ermete 

Zacconi was brought to the screen for the first time 

in Father (Padre, Dir: Giovanni PASTRONE, Italy, 

1912, 43 mins@18fps, 35mm). This is a passionate, 

Les Miserables-style story of bitter business rivals 

who find common ground in their old age. Courtesy 

Eye Institute, The Netherlands’ Lobster 

Film and Desmet Collections. Live musical 

accompaniment by Mauro Colombis. Australian 

National University’s Dr. Gino Moliterno will 

introduce the session. 

SAT 2 MAR 4.30PM 


aUSTralian cineMa’S 

GOlden SUMMer: pT 1 

Total running time approx. 120 mins, 

35mm/16mm/digital, (E) 

Three pioneering Australian film historians – Ina 

Bertrand, Andrew Pike and the NFSA’s Graham 

Shirley – join us for a first showcase of some of the 

few precious reels of films that have survived (and 

some of what’s been lost) from the approximately 

100 feature films made in Australia to 1913. This first 

session features readings from original newspaper 

reviews and other eye-witness accounts, stills and 

advertising for now lost Australian features, plus 

some of what has survived, including arguably the 

world’s first dramatic feature: 1906’s The True Story 

of the Kelly Gang. 

SAT 2 MAR SUNSET 


QUO VadiS 

Dir: Enrico GUAZZONI, Italy, 1913, extract 94 

mins@18fps, 35mm, (unclassified 18+) 

The very first adaptation of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s 

parable of Christian faith was the highpoint of Italian 

silent epic cinema. Its sheer spectacle was very real 

(and sometimes very dangerous); with decadent 

crowd scenes of up to 5000 extras, Roman chariot 

races and man-eating lions where nothing was faked. 

But what Quo Vadis did for the global film industry 

was just as spectacular. One of the first features to be 

produced by the organisational and financial power 

of a modern studio ‘system’, it was the inspiration 

for D W Griffith to make Hollywood epics like Birth 

of a Nation and Intolerance. Courtesy Fondazione 

Cineteca Italiana. Preceded by a rare example of 

the Gaumont’s chronochrome colour film process, 

Deauville-Trouville: La plage et le front de la 

mer (France, 1912, 7 mins, 35mm@18fps, courtesy 

Gaumont-Pathé Archive). Live accompaniment 

by Mauro Colombis. Doors open at 7pm for an 

approx. 8.30pm start. 

SUN 3 MAR 2PM 



GOlden SUMMer: pT 2 

Total running time approx. 120 mins, 

35mm/16mm/digital, (E) 

A second program showcases the few precious reels 

of films that have survived (and some of what’s been 

lost) from the approximately 100 features films made 

in Australia to 1913. There will be further readings 

from original newspaper reviews and other eye- 

witness accounts, stills and advertising for early, now 

lost Australian features, plus footage that includes 

Raymond Longford’s oldest surviving film, 1911’s 

The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole. Live 

accompaniment by Joshua McHugh. 

SUN 3 MAR 4.30PM 


ZiGOMar VerSUS nicK 

carTer & FanTÔMaS – in The 

ShadOW OF The GUllOTine 

Total running time 103 mins approx., 


Victorin-Hippolyte Jasse’s Zigomar films began of a 

genre tradition we now associate with Hitchcock, Fritz 

Lang and the Bond films, with his Zigomar Versus 

Nick Carter (Zigomar contre Nick Carter, Dir: Victorin- 

Hippolyte JASSE, France, 1911, 53 mins@18fps, 

35mm) facing French cinema’s first great criminal 

mastermind off against its first genius detective. 

Directed by pre-WWI French cinema’s most energetic 

and successful genre filmmaker, Louis Feuillade, In the 

Shadow of the Guillotine (Fantômas – À l’ombre 

de la guillotine, Dir: Louis FEUILLADE, France, 1913, 50 

mins@16fps, digital) was the first screen ‘appearance’ 

of some of the many identities of writer Marcel Allain 

and Pierre Souvestre’s Fantômas: the greatest of all 

international men of surreal mystery, intrigue, disguise 

and anarchistic violence. Courtesy Eye Institute, 

the Netherlands and Gaumont-Pathé Archive. 

Live percussion accompaniment by Gary France, 

Miroslav Bukovsky and Carl Dewhurst. 

TUE 5 MAR 7PM 


d W GriFFiTh and 

The MaKinG OF The 

aMerican MOVie 


35mm/16mm, (unclassified 18+) 

The short films director D W Griffith and 

cinematographer G W ‘Billy’ Bitzer made for 

American Biograph studios from 1908 and 1915 – 

and until their first great dramatic feature, Birth of 

a Nation – remain essential to understanding how 

American cinema learned how to tell movie stories. 

This selection of key early Griffith Biograph titles 

includes milestones like 1909’s A Corner in Wheat, 

or the ‘first’ gangster film, 1912’s The Musketeers 

of Pig Alley. It’s a fascinating introduction to how 

the basics of American cinematic language were 

figured out, refined and quickly made to seem 

‘conventional’. It’s also the first sight of many of 

Hollywood’s first movie stars, including Lillian Gish, 

Lionel Barrymore and Mary Pickford (later to join 

Griffith in creating United Artists). Live musical 

accompaniment. See www.nfsa.gov.au for 

further details. 

WED 6 MAR 7PM 


The aBYSS AND The GreaT 

circUS caTaSTrOphe 

Total running time 104 mins approx., 35mm, 


Two of Danish cinema’s first superstar performers, 

in films that defined their international allure and 

fascination. Cinema’s first ‘femme fatale’, Astrid 

Nielsen was introduced in Urban Gad’s The Abyss 

(Afgrunden, Dir: Urban GAD, Denmark, 1910, 38 

mins@16fps, 35mm): a sensational erotic melodrama 

whose ‘gaucho dance’ scene is a primal cinematic 

moment where high ‘art’ and low-brow titillation 

got calculatingly confused. The Great Circus 

Catastrophe (Dødsspring til hest fra cirkuskuplen, 

Dir: Eduard SCHNEDLER-SØRENSEN, Denmark, 1912, 

43 mins @ 18fps, 35mm) has a plot of sensational 

seductions and stunts – sometimes both together, 

as in the hero and his lover’s dramatic escape from 

a burning hotel – in a showcase for Danish cinema’s 

first leading man, Valdemar Psilander. Courtesy 

Det Danske Filminstitut Filmarkivet. Preceded 

by Marvellous Melbourne: Queen City of the 

South (Prod Co: Spencer’s Pictures, Aust., 1910, 

15 mins@16fps, 35mm). Live accompaniment by 

Elaine Loebenstein. 

THU 7 MAR 7PM 


The MYSTeriOUS X 

(aka Sealed Orders / Det hemmelighedsfulde X) 

Dir: Benjamin CHRISTIANSEN, Denmark, 1914, 86 

mins@20fps, 35mm, (unclassified 18+) 

A young naval lieutenant allows himself to be 

condemned as a traitor, rather than expose his wife 

to scandal – little realising that the man he falsely 

assumes is her lover is the real spy. Orson Welles-like, 

Denmark’s master director Benjamin Christiansen 

(Witchcraft Through the Ages) wrote, directed and 

starred in a mature, first film masterpiece which 

single-handedly advanced the narrative fluency and 

stylistic eloquence of Danish cinema. Deploying 

unusual close-ups, ‘deep’ shots and proto-film 

noir chiaroscuro lighting effects, it’s so good it’s 

worth extending our definition of the first years 

of the feature film into the first months of 1914! 

Courtesy Det Danske Filminstitut Filmarkivet. 

Preceded by The Sydney Morning Herald: the 

Making of a Great Newspaper (Prod Co: Pathé 

Frères, Aust., c.1910, 17 mins@18fps, 35mm). Live 

accompaniment by Elaine Loebenstein. 

FRI 8 MAR 7PM 


WhiTe SlaVerY MOVieS 



With their tabloid stories of young middle class girls 

falling into vice and prostitution, film historians argue 

that ‘Slavers’ (as the film trade then called them) 

were the first ‘exploitation’ films, and central to 

understanding the origins of feature film-going as a 

mass entertainment and social artefact. Danish studio 

Nordisk’s A Victim of the Mormons (Mormonens 

Offer, Dir: August BLOM, Denmark, 1911, 51 mins @ 

18fps, 35mm) was a slightly oddball, risqué variation 

on the theme. Nordisk’s marketing campaign 

(‘… Extraordinary Exposure of a Terrible Doctrine’) 

embodied European anxieties about the accelerating 

influence of American social culture. The success 

of Universal Studios’ Traffic in Souls (Dir: George 

Loane TUCKER, USA, 1913, 87 mins@18fps, 35mm) 

panicked authorities in many US states and eventually 

the Hollywood’s’ Hays’ Office into banning the 

topic altogether. Coincidentally – or crucially – it also 

marked the first major US dramatic feature release 

to run to over 80 mins. Courtesy Det Danske 

Filminstitut Filmarkivet and the British Film 

Institute. Live musical accompaniment. 

SAT 9 MAR 2PM 



GOlden SUMMer 

Total running time, 90 mins approx., (E) 

A reprise, ‘best of’ screening of films from our two 

Australian Cinema’s Golden Summer programs; 

presenting some of the few precious reels of films that 

have survived (and some of what’s been lost) from the 

approximately 100 feature films made in Australia to 

1913. Live accompaniment by Joshua McHugh. 



GerMinal 

Dir: Albert CAPELLANI. France, 1913, 147 

mins@18fps, digital, (unclassified 18+) 

Although little remembered even in France just a 

few decades ago, new restorations and critical re- 

evaluation have elevated director Albert Capellani 

to the status of French cinema’s first great ‘auteur’ 

filmmaker. Capellani’s adaptation of Emile Zola’s 

novel of hard times in coal town France is his greatest 

work from this period. The film arguably marks the 

beginnings of social realism in European cinema: in 

the careful use of grimy locations and atmospheric 

sets and in Capellani’s detailed authority over his 

actor’s mannered use of working class gesture. 

Visually Germinal gets inside and underneath 

the low ceilings and oppressive atmosphere of a 

typical late 19 th century French coal mining town; 

its cottages, bars and oppressive mining shafts. 

Emotionally, Capellini intensely exteriorises the 

‘Zolaesque’ psychology, and the writer’s original 

political concerns. Courtesy La Cinémathèque 

Française and Gaumont-Pathé Archive. Live 

musical accompaniment by Elaine Loebenstein. 


SIGHT AND SOUND’S 

GREAT FILMS 

2001: a Space OdYSSeY 

Dir: Stanley KUBRICK, USA, 1968, 141 mins, DCP 

(orig. 70mm), (G) 

Kubrick’s epic space film did not have a great start. 

At its worldwide premiere, over 200 people walked 

out before half way through, most in a confused 

daze. However, over time, its retelling of Arthur C. 

Clarke’s novel The Sentinel has become appreciated 

for its innovative visual effects at a time when space 

travel was a dominating, and suddenly realistic 

thought in the imagination of Western society. 

2001… would define Kubrick’s career, methods and 

authority as a filmmaker, by being ‘a stand-alone 

monument, a great visionary leap, unsurpassed in its 

vision of man and the universe.’ (Roger Ebert). New 

2k digital release. Plus the 2001… of 1902: George 

Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la 

lune, France, 1902, 12 mins@18fps) in its new 35mm 

restoration, courtesy Lobster Film, Groupama 

Gan Foundation for Cinema and Technicolor 

Foundation for Cinema Heritage. 

SUN 10 MAR 2PM 

AMERICAN MOVIE TREASURES: 

UNIVERSAL NOIRS 

The naKed ciTY 

Dir: Jules DASSIN, USA, 1948, 96 mins, 35mm, (PG) 

‘There are eight million stories in the Naked City. 

This is one of them…’ The very first story from the 

Naked City was as much ground-breaking as cliché 

making. Auteur-producer Mark Hellinger (sadly 

to die during the film’s production) had originally 

intended to evoke the tabloid realism of New York 

photographer Weegee. William H. Daniels’ Oscar- 

winning photography certain did much to relocate 

Hollywood from the studio backlot to the New 

York’s street frontline. Yet director Jules Dassin’s 

clearer achievement was in defining a new, ‘police 

procedural’ sub-cycle. The Naked City nudged noir’s 

themes and cinematic influences away from pre-war 

German expressionism, towards the then new creative 

possibilities suggested by post war Italian neo-realism. 

Imported 35mm print. Presented with the 

support of the Embassy of the United States and 

courtesy of Universal Studios. 


BOND(S) AT 50 

MOdeSTY BlaiSe 

Dir: Joseph LOSEY, UK/USA, 1966, 119 mins, 

35mm, (PG) 

By the mid-1960s, Bond-ish, cartoonish superspies 

were so high in the cinema zeitgeist that everyone 

wanted to have a go. Between the Venice and Cannes 

film festival-winning art movie serious of King and 

Country and Accident, director Joseph Losey injected 

some freaky pop culture into his filmography, with 

this take on Peter O’Donnell and Jim Holdaway’s 

newspaper cartoon strip heroine. Evan Jones’ script is 

maybe too fashionably ambiguous; was it adapting or 

‘metatextually reading’ their erotic, neo-feminist crime 

boss, turned superspy? And performances by Italian 

art cinema’s blond goddess Monica Vitti (as Modesty) 

and Brit-cinema enfant terrible Terence Stamp (as her 

consort, Willie – and favourite source of permanent 

sexual tension) concede the point; riffing on their own 

celebrity status as much as playing their characters. 

Still, with Losey regular Dirk Bogarde also playing super 

villain Gabriel, it’s just so much campy fun. Imported 

35mm print, courtesy British Film Institute. 

THU 14 MAR 2PM 



The naKed ciTY 

Dir: Jules DASSIN, USA, 1948, 96 mins, 35mm, (PG) 

Imported 35mm print. Presented with the 

support of the Embassy of the United States 

and courtesy of Universal Studios. 


BOND(S) AT 50 

MOdeSTY BlaiSe 

Dir: Joseph LOSEY, UK/USA, 1966, 119 mins, 

35mm, (PG) 

Imported 35mm print, courtesy British Film 

Institute. 

SAT 16 MAR 2PM 

dinGO 

Dir: Rolf DE HEER. Aust./France, 1991, 109 mins, 

35mm, (PG) 

New print from the NFSA’s Deluxe/Kodak 

Project. 



GREATEST FILMS 

2001: a Space OYdeSSY 

Dir: Stanley KUBRICK, USA, 1968, 141 mins, DCP 

(orig. 70mm), (G) 

New 2k digital release. 


CULT OF ARC: ZOMCOM 

harOld’S GOinG STiFF AND 

JUan OF The dead 

Total running time 169 mins, (unclassified 18+) 

Like Simon Pegg before him, UK director Keith Wright 

has put a humorous spin on the ever popular zombie 

genre. Harold’s Going Stiff (Dir: Keith WRIGHT, UK, 

2011, 77 mins, digital) is fashioned in the style of a 

BBC doco and follows the tale of Harold as his gradual 

transformation takes place. But it may only be the 

love of his home care nurse that can save him from 

a dumber-than-zombies vigilante squad out to get 

him. In the multi festival award winning Juan of the 

Dead (Juan de los Muertos, Dir: Alejandro BRUGUES, 

Spain/Cuba, 2011, 92 mins, digital), Cuban small-time 

criminal Juan tries to profit from a recent zombie 

outbreak – while the government insists the undead 

are just CIA-funded political dissidents. Either way, 

they need to be taken down, and it’s inevitable that 

Juan will find himself where he doesn’t want to be. 




ciTiZen Kane 

Dir: Orson WELLES, USA, 1941, 119 mins, 35mm, (PG) 

For decades, Welles’ multi-award winning debut 

feature film sat at the top of Sight and Sound’s 

greatest films poll, only being dethroned in 2012 

by Hitchcock’s Vertigo. No doubt it will stay near 

the top for many years to come, still lauded for 

its innovations in cinematography and narrative 

structure. Allowed complete control by the studio 

of what Welles called the ‘train set’, Citizen Kane 

showed what he was truly capable of, or what others 

such as cinematographer Greg Toland could do, in 

the presence of his inspiration. It would sadly be the 

only instance that Welles was given that unlimited 

management of a film. His subsequent films would 

sometimes find even greater critically acclaim, but 

he was rarely afforded the satisfaction that his first 

feature would give him, and define him. 


BOND(S) AT 50 

caSinO rOYale 

Dir: Val GUEST / John HUSTON / Ken HUGHES / 

Joseph MCGRATH / Robert PARRISH, UK/USA, 

1967, 131 mins, 35mm, (PG) 

Now that you’ve been to the multiplex for Skyfall, 

come to Arc for David Niven, Ursula Andress, Peter 

Sellers, Woody Allen (as ‘Little Jimmy Bond’), et al 

and all bonding in one of cinema’s guiltiest pleasures. 

Adapting – but barely bothered – with the one Bond 

novel that had (then) defected from the official 

franchise, What’s New Pussycat producer Charles K. 

Feldman hired five directors, ten writers (including Billy 

Wilder, Ben Hecht, Joseph Heller and Terry Southern, 

with Allen and Sellers also making up their scenes as 

they went along) and Burt Bacharach to apply their 

own theory of mutually assured comic destruction. It’s 

as chaotic and as illogical as the cold war itself, but a 

hilarious pastiche of Ian Fleming, Sean Connery, iron 

curtains, Scottish tartan and ‘60s psychedelia. 




ciTiZen Kane 

Dir: Orson WELLES, USA, 1941, 119 mins, 35mm, (PG) 


The anGel’S Share 

Dir: Ken LOACH, UK/France/Belgium, 2012, 

106 mins, DCP, (MA15+) 

FREE TO MAx PASS HOLDERS. 


dinGO 

Dir: Rolf DE HEER. Aust./France, 1991, 109 mins, 

35mm, (PG) 

New print from the NFSA’s Deluxe/Kodak Project. 




The rUleS OF The GaMe 

(La Règle du jeu) Dir: Jean RENOIR, France, 1939, 

106 mins, 35mm, (G) 

Celebrity aviator André causes a scandal by publicly 

denouncing his mistress, then chasing her to the 

country estate of her husband, the Marquis de la 

Cheyniest. There all the little lusts and secrets of 

upstairs and downstairs French society suddenly run 

wild. Despite initial box office failure, banning by the 

Vichy government, and the apparent destruction of 

the negative during WW2, rediscovery in the late 

1950s led to The Rules of the Game’s many decades 

of acclaim as the second greatest film of all time (on 

the Sight and Sound poll at least) after Citizen Kane. 

It remains the best introduction to all the intricate, 

brilliant, subtle creative shape-shiftings that go on in 

the films of master French director, Jean Renoir. 




106 mins, DCP, (MA15+) 

cineMa’S 

GOlden 

SUMMer 

THE BIRTH OF 

THE FEATURE FILM, 

IN AUSTRALIA 

AND THE WORLD, 

1910-1913 

23 FEB – 9 MAR 

1913 is recognised as an international milestone 

in modern cinema. Big-budget ‘feature’ dramas 

of more than 40 minutes in length had begun to 

find success with audiences in Europe from 1910 

onwards. But 1913 is often considered the year in 

which these ‘features’ became confident in their 

storytelling powers, superseding the older short 

comedies and melodramas that had dominated 

cinema’s first 15 years. 

The trend culminated internationally with 

Hollywood’s first megahit, DW Griffith’s The Birth of 

a Nation in 1915. However Hollywood and American 

audiences arrived belatedly to feature film production 

– even if by 1918 they would dominate it globally. 

Until 1913, feature films were a speciality of only 

a few national cinemas: France (then the world’s 

biggest film industry); Italy (where the feature film 

epic was invented); Scandinavia (where there had 

always been a close connection between cinema and 

dramatic theatre). And here in Australia. 

For a moment between the late 1900s and 1913, 

Australia was one of the few nations in the world 

to have an active and prolific feature film industry. 

Popular colonial, convict and society melodramas 

– previously only seen on the live stages of the 

capital cities – were quickly recreated on film for 

the first Australian picture palaces by producers and 

filmmakers such as Spencer’s Pictures, Pathé Frères 

and Amalgamated Pictures. They reached suburban, 

regional and bush audiences of tens of thousands 

that seemed ravenous for great movie yarns that 

defined the then new nation. In one year alone, 1911, 

it is estimated that local filmmakers produced more 

than 40 features. 

The boom lasted briefly, until January 1913. Then 

this first generation of major Australian film industry 

companies were amalgamated into one firm, 

Australasian Films. It was the making of our first film 

industry ‘major’. Yet it was also a controversial business 

decision; and for that reason, 2013 marks a centennial 

in Australian cinema history about which film 

historians have mixed feelings. This ‘combination’ of 

the Australian movie-making business (as it came to be 

called, sometimes disparagingly) preferred to mostly 

import films from Europe and the US. It turned this 

first flood of local feature film production into a trickle 

– as it would largely remain for the next 60 years. 

Cinema’s Golden Summer celebrates the 

centennial of this first great age of cinema, in 

Australia and the rest of the world. Although many 

of the great feature films of this age have been lost, 

the series will select some of the greatest and most 

representative titles which have survived from these 

four pioneering national cinemas. Italian cinema’s 

classical, historical and biblical epics, such as Quo 

Vadis and Inferno. French cinema’s adaptations 

of great 19th century literature, and its invention of 

crime thrillers and film noir in films like the Zigomar 

and Fantomas series; Swedish and Danish cinema’s 

love of compelling social dramas like Ingeborg 

Holm or The Great Circus Catastrophe. And 

Australian cinema’s love of nationalistic stories of 

convict heroes (and heroines), beginning with the 

world’s first dramatic feature film, 1906’s The True 

Story of the Kelly Gang. 

Cinema’s Golden Summer will draw on the 

collections of the NFSA’s fellow film archives in 

Europe and the US. Alongside their early feature films 

will screen some of the few surviving fragments of 

the Australian movies from the era, preserved in the 

NFSA collection. Lectures and conversations with film 

historians will also discuss what’s left (in stills, posters 

and contemporary accounts) of the dozens more 

local features made before 1913, but sadly now lost 

to us. Finally, looking back to an era that also saw 

the beginnings of Australian documentary making, 

Cinema’s Golden Summer will sample some of the 

‘actualities’ through which Australians saw their own, 

newly national society in the early 1910s. 

Many titles will be screened in their original 35mm 

film format and with live silent accompaniment, with 

the NFSA’s Arc cinema continuing its role as Australia’s 

unique venue for the silent film experience. 

aleKSei GUerMan 

31 MAR – 27 APR 

‘People said that I had a Bobby Fischer complex 

and just didn’t want to play – but Bobby Fischer 

was the world champion…’ (Aleksei Guerman) 

In this age of Netflix, streaming video and burn- 

on-demand DVDs, it can be all too tempting – 

comforting, even – to think that there is no more 

cinematic terra incognita left to be discovered, that 

all of the treasures of world moviemaking are simply 

lying in wait for us to dial up in our living rooms. And 

yet there is the case of Aleksei Guerman (1938-; or 

‘German’ – the original Russian for his surname is 

Герман). Indisputably one of the greatest filmmakers 

alive in the world today, his work has, until now, 

been nearly impossible to see, little distributed 

outside of his native Russia (with the exception of the 

French co-production Khrustalyov, My Car!) and 

wholly unavailable on any home video format in the 

English-speaking world. To be fair, Guerman’s five 

features to date, all shot in stunning black-and-white 

and staged in complex, obsessively detailed tracking 

shots that rank with the best of Scorsese and De 

Palma – and especially with his far better-known 

peer in Russian cinema, Andrei Tarkovsky – have long 

been championed by a small but enthusiastic cult of 

admirers. Yet even the savvy art-film goer is unlikely 

to have heard of Guerman, let alone seen any of 

his work. It’s a dilemma for which this retrospective 

represents one small corrective. 

Guerman was born in Leningrad into something like 

Soviet cultural royalty, the son of author, playwright, 

reporter and screenwriter Yuri Guerman, a man who 

dined with Stalin and Gorky and whose writing would 

directly or indirectly inform many of his son’s films. The 

younger Guerman also studied theatre and film, the 

latter under the great Grigory Kozintsev (known for his 

masterful film versions of Hamlet and King Lear) and 

began as an apprentice in the then-prosperous Soviet 

studio system. But almost from the start, Guerman 

proved to be a troublesome cog in that well-oiled 

machine, clashing with co-director Grigori Aronov 

over authorship of The Seventh Companion and 

running so afoul of the authorities on his next picture, 

the masterpiece Trial on the Road, that the film was 

suppressed for the next 15 years. 

Though Guerman – together with his wife and 

regular screenwriting partner Svetlana Karmalita – has 

continued to work in the decades since, his projects 

have been subject to variously long production delays, 

owing to everything from the collapse of funding to 

(in the case of Khrustalyov, My Car) the collapse of 

the Soviet Union. (Well, that and Guerman’s refusal to 

cast an American movie star as Stalin.) Ironically son 

Alexsei Guerman Jr.’s films, such 2008’s Paper Soldiers, 

now have a higher international profile. Yet Guerman 

has, rather like one of his own wizened, war-weary 

protagonists, soldiered forth, creating one of the 

most profoundly human and richly cinematic bodies 

of work in modern movies. As he (perhaps) nears the 

completion of work on his decades-in-the-making 

sixth feature, The Chronicle of the Arkanar Massacre 

(an adaptation of the brothers Sturgatskys’ sci-fi novel 

Hard to Be a God that was shot in the early 2000s, is 

often rumoured to be about to surface, but still is in 

– it’s now seventh year of – post-production), we are 

delighted to present the first Australian retrospective 

of Guerman’s work. The program includes a new, 

English-subtitled 35mm print of The Seventh 

Companion, but also utilises rare local archival prints 

from the NFSA collection. (Scott Foundas, with thanks 

to the Film Society Lincoln Centre). 

aMerican MOVie 

TreaSUreS: 


TO 6 APR 

Hollywood’s Universal Studios came into being in 

1912 and remains its oldest surviving ‘major’ studio. 

In 2013 we continue our celebration of Universal’s 

legacy through a look at the unusual qualities the 

studio’s contract filmmakers brought to Hollywood 

film noir, in the 1940s and ’50. 

Noir was one of the genres (– or rather a ‘cycle’ 

of films in Hollywood cinema history –) Universal 

always did best, alongside its horror movies and 

melodramas. In some senses, Universal’s noirs have 

more in common with those other house specialties 

than would seem to be the case. As horror movies 

had done in the 1930s, as Technicolor melodrama 

would do in the ‘50s, noir was a place where the 

studio’s contract writers and directors could work 

under the cover of popular ‘programmer’ movies, to 

channel darker moral themes and (in the late 1940s) 

expose some of the post-war scars of American 

society. What seemed unique at Universal (or just 

lucky) was the ‘A’ list talent pool. Studio talent scouts 

in the 1940s always seemed good at buying good 

source material (particularly the work of Cornell 

Woolrich). Yet those who adapted it were also a 

good fit. In the post-war period, it was the home of 

Robert Siodmak – the German émigré director who 

was one of the key artistic links between the look 

of post-war US noir and that of pre-war German 

Expressionist cinema. There were others with similarly 

European sensibilities, such as Jules Dassin and 

producer Joan Harrison. In the late 1940s, it attracted 

New York stage, literary and intellectual talent such 

as producer Mark Hellinger, who’s Brute Force and 

The Naked City did much the shift the noir cycle from 

the gothic pole towards the influences of Italian neo- 

realism. And in the late 1950s, Universal, of course 

became the home of Alfred Hitchcock. But the 

strength of Universal’s ‘B’ talent pool also gave the 

lower depths of its noir production slate a consistent 

backbone and an occasional sting in its tail. 

American Movie Treasures: Universal’s Movies 

is presented with the support of the Embassy 

of the United States. Presented with the 

assistance of Universal Studios. 

The anGelS’ 

Share 

21 – 8 APR 

Glasgow social worker Harry has taken charge of 

another batch of the usual no-hopers, all under orders 

to do their hours of community service or go to jail. 

One stands out from the rest. Robbie (Paul Brannigan) 

is smart and keen to earn the respect of his girlfriend, 

the mother of his first child; but frustration and a 

violent temper are also pushing him towards an abyss 

of drugs and crime. Harry sees through the bravado to 

the fear, but also the intelligence. As an alternative, he 

offers to share his own passion: a connoisseur’s love 

of fine Scottish whiskey. Astonishingly, it’s something 

Robbie has a knack for, turning out to have what is 

called in the trade as ‘a nose’. Quickly, he goes from 

liking a dram to developing a keen palate and a 

surprisingly expertise. Harry might have simply wanted 

to give the boy a temporary time out. Yet Robbie’s 

smart enough to know this new world offers a life- 

changing opportunity – for a lad with an eye for the 

main chance. 

Critical acclaim and a 2012 Cannes Film Festival Jury 

prize for Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty’s new 

film was to be expected. Yet not its surprising UK 

box office success – or the upbeat and unpredictably 

heart-warming tone, for a director whose last 

comedy was 1991’s Riff-Raff. It’s a Whiskey Galore 

for our times. Essentially Scottish – but the post- 

industrial Scotland of the 21 st century. 

‘In many ways this is his most relaxed and 

successful screen offering for some time… 

warm, funny and good-natured. It’s a 

freewheeling social-realist caper – unworldly 

and at times almost childlike. Loach has for my 

money found a happy comic register…’ (Peter 

Bradshaw, The Guardian) 

Dir: Ken Loach, UK/France/Belgium, 2012, 

106 mins, DCP, (classification tbc) 

LIMITED RELEASE SEASON

nfsa.gov.au 

The National Film and Sound 

Archive of Australia is a 

member of the International 

Federation of Film Archives 

The Arc cinema program is curated by NFSA Cinema Programming 

(Quentin Turnour, Cynthia Piromalli). NFSA Chief Projectionist: Reece 

Black. Theatre Manager: Trevor Anderson. Projectionists: Greg Rooke, 

John Taylor. 

While every effort is made to provide accurate information, the NFSA 

reserves the right to alter, without notice, advertised Arc screening 

programs or starting times. 

To sign up for the NFSA’s email news or receive a copy of the calendar 

in the post, email arc@nfsa.gov.au 

Goldfinger 

Don McAlpine 

Citizen Kane Comrades 

cineMacalendar 

SUN 21 APR 4.30PM 

ShOW Me The MaGic 

Dir: Cathy HENKEL, Aust., 2012, 75 mins, digital, 

(classification tbc) 

THU 25 APR 11AM 

SPARC: FILMS FOR LITTLE FELLAS 

diarY OF a WiMpY Kid: 

dOG daYS 

Dir: David BOWERS, USA, 2012, 94 mins, 35mm, (PG) 

It’s summer holidays, and Greg’s plans to spend the 

whole time gaming goes horribly wrong so he’s stuck 

at scout camp with his Dad. He would rather hang 

out with his best friend Rowley (and quite possibly his 

crush Holly), but can he do that without offending 

Rowley’s parents TOO much? All tickets $5. 

THU 25 APR 2PM 





ALEkSEI GUERMAN 

MY Friend, iVan lapShin 

(Мой друг Иван Лапшин / Moy drug Ivan Lapshin) 

Dir: Aleksei GUERMAN, USSR, 1984, 100mins, 

35mm, (unclassified 18+) 

FRI 26 APR 11AM 


WrecK-iT ralph 3d 

Dir: Rich MOORE, USA, 2012, 108 mins, 3D DCP, (PG) 

Ralph has been the bad guy in the popular computer 

game Fix It Felix for 30 years, and thinks that it’s his 

turn to be a hero. He can’t do it in his own game, so 

which game can he go to? All tickets $8. 

SAT 27 APR 2PM 

DON MCALPINE ACS, ASC 

dOn’S parTY 

Dir: Bruce BERESFORD, Aust., 1976, 90 mins, 

35mm, (MA15+) 

On the night of 1969 federal election, school teacher 

Don Henderson (John Hargreaves) assembles friends, 

colleagues partners and gate crashers together 

(including Graham Kennedy, Jeanie Drynan, Ray 

Barrett, Graeme Blundell and Harold Hopkins), for a 

party all assume will celebrate the victory of Gough 

Whitlam’s Labor Party. Bruce Beresford’s adaptation 

of David Williamson’s era-defining play took the ocker 

comedy into its dark side. Despite the live theatre 

origins, one Don (McAlpine’s) visual exposure of 

another ‘Don’’s moral hypocrisy is a remarkable piece 

of chamber cinematography, shot entirely on location 

within a real brown bricks and mortar suburban 

house. From the NFSA’s Kodak/Atlab Collection. 

SAT 27 APR 4.30PM 

BOND(S) AT 50 

carrY On SpYinG 

Dir: Gerald THOMAS, UK, 1964, 87 mins, 16mm 

(orig. 35mm), (G) 

Even after 50 years, the Bond franchise still has some 

catching up to do on the 31 film run of that even 

more noble British cinematic institution, the Carry-On 

movies. You many think of them as throwbacks in 

film history, but they were ahead of the pack here, 

making a Bond spy-spoof just after the release of To 

Russia With Love. As the team battles STENCH (Society 

for the Total Extinction of Non-Conforming Humans), 

this is one of the best from the Golden (early 1960s) 

Age of Carry-Ons. Although Barbara Windsor makes 

her first Carry-on series appearance as the Bond-girl- 

like ‘Daphne Honeycutt’, there’s not too much of the 

libidinous wink and nudge of the later films. Instead, 

‘Spying’s mission is to prick Sean Connery’s arrogance 

– and its secret weapons are those great English comic 

mouse-men, Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey. 

From the NFSA collection. 


BOND(S) AT 50 

GOldFinGer 

Dir: Guy HAMILTON, UK/USA, 1964, 110 mins, 

35mm, (PG) 

The third of the Bond films sees Sean Connery trying 

to thwart Auric Goldfinger’s (Gert Fröbe) plan to 

rob Fort Knox. It’s the first of four in the series to be 

directed by Guy Hamilton and in many ways remains 

if not the best, then the first where all the parts of the 

Bond moviemaking operation were finally running 

to specification. There’s twice the budget of any of 

the previous films, the gadgets (the Aston Martin first 

appears here), the Bond girls (Shirley Eaton, Honor 

Blackman’s Pussy Galore as the anti-heroine), all the irony, 

all the set pieces, and all the psychopathology of the bad 

guys. UK reviewers took its artistic success on its own 

terms, turning in compliments like Penelope Gilliatt’s: 

‘… so elegant – so vile…’. Technicolor 35mm print, 

courtesy UCLA Film and Television Archive. 

SUN 28 APR 2PM 



MirrOr 

(Зеркало / Zerkalo) Dir: Andrei TARKOVSKY, 

USSR, 1975, 107 mins, 35mm, (PG) 

Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s body of work 

tends to divide film critics only as to which is his 

masterpiece. 1975’s Mirror is the most respected, 

reflected in its position, at number 19 for the 

critics and nine for the directors in the Sight and 

Sound poll (and the ideal film to set alongside our 

look at the films of Tarkovsky’s Soviet filmmaking 

peer, Alexsei Guerman). This is Tarkovsky’s 8 ½ 

and his most overtly autobiographical film; to the 

extent that his own family were involved, including 

on-soundtrack readings by his father, poet Arseny 

Tarkovsky. Three epochs in Tarkovsky’s life and that 

of his parents meld and slip in and out of its narrative 

focus: his childhood and parent’s marriage in the 

1930s; survival during the Second World War; and 

Tarkovsky’s own troubled marital life in the 1960s. 


ALEkSEI GERMAN 

Trial On The rOad 

(Проверќа на ддороѓаӽ / Proverka na dorogakh) 

Dir: Aleksei GUERMAN, USSR, 1971, 96 mins, 

35mm, (unclassified 18+). 

From the NFSA collection. 




TOUch OF eVil 

Dir: Orson WELLES, USA, 1958, 108 mins. 35mm, (M) 

A young Mexican Federal detective struggles 

with gringo chauvinism and official corruption 

in a California-Mexico border town. Welles’ final 

Hollywood studio project was a residency (on the 

deal-breaking insistence of star Charlton Heston) 

at the production unit of Universal genre producer, 

Albert Zugsmith. Tight and visceral, it’s become the 

most famous entry in the ‘border noir’ sub-genre. 

Yet in no film since Citizen Kane did Welles also so 

hugely enjoy himself: in creating a total atmosphere 

of absolute power corrupting dissolutely; in casting 

himself as Chief Quinlan and in its picturesque, ‘off- 

‘casting of friends and passers-by (Ray Collins, Joseph 

Cotton and Akim Tamiroff, plus Marlene Dietrich and 

Zsa Zsa Gabor as shady ladies); or in its production 

bravado – especially in the film’s slow-burn, opening 

credit sequence. Presented with the support of 

the Embassy of the United States. 




106 mins, DCP, (MA15+) 




106 mins, DCP, (MA15+) 


BOND(S) AT 50 

cleOpaTra JOneS 

Dir: Jack STARRETT, USA, 1973, 89 mins, 35mm, (M) 

By day, Cleopatra Jones (Tamara Dobson) is a 

supermodel. After hours, she’s ‘six feet, two inches 

of dynamite…’; a karate black-belt wearing, Corvette 

Stingray-driving, super-secret government agent. 

But when Cleo shuts down the Turkish connection, 

arch enemy Mommy (Shelley Winters) seeks revenge 

by targeting a halfway house for African-American 

heroin addicts. So many films in the Blaxploitation 

cycle stole from or mashed up other genres. But 

few are more interesting for what’s inside the plain 

wrapping of a feisty 1970s’ black action movie. Not 

just the inspired fusion of stylings (Bond movie-style 

cinematic tourism, ‘Black is beautiful’-style chic, New 

Hollywood-style realism). It’s also the film’s canny 

referencing of contemporary cultural and political 

currents. From the collection of the NFSA. 


BOND(S) AT 50 

aUSTralian TV SUperSpieS 

Total running time, 110 mins, (unclassified 18+) 

Bond spy mania reached Australian TV in the late 

1960s and ‘70s; often playing out Australia’s Vietnam 

War-era geo-political anxieties, or our imagined role 

in post-colonial Asia. Starring Tony Ward (but making 

a star also of actor Gerard Kennedy, as the brooding 

Kragg), Crawford Production’s Hunter (1966-69, 

52 mins, video) was the pioneering Australian 

commercial TV drama producer’s next ratings success 

after its breakthrough with Homicide. From Skippy 

producers Fauna, Shannon’s Mob (1973-74, 52 mins, 

video) reflected a later, more politically cynical 1970s. 

With the core business of its spy agency – FIASCO – 

being the cleaning up potential government scandal, 

stars Robin Ramsay and Frank Gallagher played their 

roles more as spooks than as superspies. With thanks 

to Crawford Productions and Fauna Productions. 

FREE screening, bookings advised. See nfsa.gov. 

au/arc for further details. 




The SearcherS 

Dir: John FORD, USA, 1956, 119 mins, 35mm, (G) 

When audiences think of westerns, they invariably 

think of John Wayne. Wayne starred in a plethora 

of westerns during his career, but it was John Ford’s 

The Searchers that allowed him to fully exhibit 

his emotional range, in the multi-layered story of a 

returned soldier from the Civil War who (for perhaps 

questionable reasons) is looking for his niece (Natalie 

Wood) who has been kidnapped by Indians. This 

equally intimate and widescreen revenge epic has 

now surpassed admiration. For even those who 

loathe Wayne’s politics it’s the best western ever 

made – and one of the few that can move you to 

tears. From the NFSA collection. 




The GOdFaTher 

Dir: Francis Ford COPPOLA, USA, 1972, 175 mins, 

DCP (orig. 35mm), (R) 

New Hollywood landmark and godfather to The 

Sopranos, Boardwork Empire and every organised crime 

movie and TV drama ever since, Coppola’s generational 

gangster saga has long been established on the Sight 

and Sound lists. Although in 2012 it dropped to 21st on 

the critics’ poll, its enduring influence was confirmed 

by its number seven ranking in the directors’ poll. All of 

The Godfather trilogy films are now too-rarely seen 

for the big screen, operatic experience they should be. 

It’s the only way to truly grasp the grandeur of their set 

pieces and their studies in enveloping moral corruption. 

New 2k release. 


BOND(S) AT 50 

The aMBUSherS 

Dir: Henry LEVIN, USA, 1967, 102 mins, 35mm, (M) 

Dipso- and satyro-maniac superspy Matt Helm 

must recover a secret experimental flying saucer, 

stolen by a crazed South American dictator. This 

is the third of four irreverent, Bond-alike, knock- 

off adaptations of Donald Hamilton’s spy novels, 

produced by Hollywood dealmaker Irving Allen. 

Although ratpacking star Dean Martin plays the film 

as ‘lounge-cinema’, instinctively sucking all of the 

seriousness out of the Hamilton’s fictional Helm, to 

be fair he does honour the original’s character flaws: 

overweight, washed up, and by necessity out-witting 

rather than out fighting his enemies. The biggest joke 

of the series is in hindsight: in how the tiring Bond 

films of the 1970s seemed to be borrowing from the 

Helm movies. Original 35mm Technicolor print, 

courtesy UCLA Film and Television Archive. 




106 mins, DCP, (MA15+) 

april 

THU 4 APR 2PM 



cape Fear 

Dir: J Lee THOMPSON, USA, 1960, 105 mins, 

35mm, (M) 

The first fully Hollywood feature for 1950s Brit-noir 

specialist J Lee Thompson, Cape Fear is one of the 

missing links between classic noir and the more overt 

brutality of 60’s neo-noir. Although the Hollywood 

Production Code was beginning to crack, the morally 

ambiguous themes in John D MacDonald’s source 

novel, The Executioners still had to be toned down 

in adaptation – and were further, savagely censored 

in many countries, including Australia. Yet much as 

in Alfred Hitchcock’s early 1960s films, Thompson 

deploys a spread of artistic assets to imply all the 

sexual and social menace that dare not speak its name. 

The greatest, of course is Robert Mitchum’s stone cold 

performance as the redneck psychopath, Max Cady 

– a faster, looser update on his iconic embodiment of 

modern evil in The Night of the Hunter. Presented 

with the support of the Embassy of the United 

States and Universal Pictures. 

THU 4 APR 7PM 


KhrUSTalYOV, MY car! 

(Хрусталёв, машину! / Khrustalyov, mashinu!) Dir: 

Aleksei GUERMAN, USSR/France, 1998, 150 mins, 


Guerman’s most visually stunning, wildly provocative 

work, this fever-dream meditation on the crazed 

final days of Stalin’s regime was a cause célèbre of 

the 1998 Cannes and New York film festivals. Based 

on a Joseph Brodsky story, the film takes off from 

the infamous ‘Doctor’s Plot,’ in which predominately 

Jewish Moscow doctors were fingered as members 

of a conspiracy to assassinate Stalin. Yuri Glinshi, 

Red Army general as well as famous brain surgeon, 

is sent to the Gulag after an anti-semitic purge, then 

freed in a final effort to save the ‘People’s Little 

Father’ from his date with destiny. Guerman creates 

a consistently amazing visual and aural rendition of 

the charged atmosphere of those sad times, in which 

no shadow is devoid of possible danger, nor any stray 

remark free from potentially lethal consequences. 

Imported 35mm print. 

SAT 6 APR 2PM 

BOND(S) AT 50 

The Face OF FU ManchU 

Dir: Don SHARP, UK, 1966, 96 mins, 

16mm (orig. 35mm), (PG) 

Inevitably our James Bond(s) must finally come face 

to face with their quasi-steampunkish origins. One 

nice way to do so is via a too-brief tribute to work 

of Tasmanian-born, UK-based director Don Sharp 

(1921-2011). Although ignored in his homeland, 

Sharp was an underrated master of lower-budget 

and often eccentric British horror/fantasy. Amongst 

Sharp’s best work was his handling of this first in a 

five film revival of Sax Rohmer’s 1910s stories of the 

fiendish oriental super criminal (and the antecedent 

for many Bond villains). Despite a British ‘B’ movie 

budget he effectively keeps the jazzy 1920s setting. 

And encouraged by the always looming presence 

of regular collaborator Christopher Lee, Sharp also 

uses Manchu’s insane plot – to annihilate Britain with 

germ warfare – to give the film a looming, often 

unnerving and very 1960s cold war resonance. 




cape Fear 

Dir: J Lee THOMPSON, USA, 1960, 105 mins, 

35mm, (M) 

Presented with the support of the Embassy of 

the United States and Universal Pictures. 


cOMradeS 

Dir: Bill DOUGLAS, UK, 1987, 183 mins, 35mm, (M) 

New, imported 35mm print, courtesy The 

British Film Institute. 

SUN 7 APR 2PM 



in The MOOd FOr lOVe 

(花樣年華 /Fa yeung nin wa) Dir: WONG Kar-wai, 

Hong Kong, 2000, 97 mins, 35mm, (G) 

Passionate, but utterly chaste, a poignant bond 

builds between a journalist and a secretary (Tony 

Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung), as they share 

their fate of being cheated on by absent spouses. 

Inspired by the lost world of 1960s colonial Hong 

Kong – evocated through Australian Chris Doyle’s 

cinematography and deeply coded references to the 

music, fashion, and melodramas of its then popular 

cinema – director Wong Kar-wai masterpiece is a 

fable of a moral love bounded by a rigid epoch and 

social codes. In the Mood for Love’s status in the 

Sight and Sound poll (24th for critics, 67th for the 

directors) is greater than the numbers would seem. 

Although made in our century’s first year, it is still its 

top ranked movie – and worth checking out again, 

with Wong’s first film in six years soon for release. 


ALEkSEI GERMAN 

Trial On The rOad 

(Проверќа на ддороѓаӽ / Proverka na dorogakh) Dir: 

Aleksei GUERMAN, USSR, 1971, 96 mins, 35mm, 

(unclassified 18+). 

As great an anti-war film as Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, 

Guerman’s first solo feature was banned by the 

Soviets for 15 years, only finally earning a proper 

release in 1986. Inspired by a real case documented 

by Guerman’s father, it’s the story of Lazarev (Vladimir 

Zamanskiy); a Junior Sergeant in the Red Army who 

defected to the Nazis and, as the film begins, has 

switched sides yet again. His loyalties questioned by 

all except for a benevolent Commander (Rolan Bykov), 

Lazarev is forced to prove his patriotism via a series 

of increasingly perilous missions, climaxing in the 

nail-biting re-routing of a Nazi supply train that ranks 

among Guerman’s most dazzling set-pieces. Guerman 

cuts through the popular myths of WWII valour 

to show us a bitterly ironic battlefield, one where 

distinctions like ‘hero’ and ‘traitor’ have ceased. From 

the NFSA collection. 


cOMradeS 


New, imported 35mm print, courtesy The 

British Film Institute. 


BOND(S) AT 50 

The ipcreSS File 

Dir: Sidney J. FURIE, UK/USA, 1965, 109 mins, 

35mm, (PG) 

Harry Palmer has refined tastes in food, women 

and caustic quips. Still, a working British spy in ‘60s 

London also has to catch the bus, work in cramped 

offices, acquit his monthly petty cash and humour 

managers he secretly knows are twits. The first of 

Michael Caine’s three, deprecating takes on writer 

Len Deighton’s cockney spy is often seen as a realistic 

rejection of the Bond power fantasies. Yet that is to 

ignore the common source of both franchises. The 

Ipcress File was nurtured by Bond producer Harry 

Saltzman, who borrowed many of the creatives 

behind the early 007 movies (like editor and later 

Bond director Peter Hunt, designer Ken Adam and 

composer John Barry) to consciously restyle its plots, 

tone and characters, as more adult, realistic and 

ironic. New imported 35mm print. 


SPARC: kIDS’ CINEMA 

arrieTTY 

(借りぐらしのアリエッティ/ Kari-gurashi no Arietti) 

Dir: YONEBAYASHI Hiromasa, Japan, 2010, 

94 mins, 35mm, (G) 

The Clock family are ‘borrowers’; little people under 

the floorboards that live off all the forgotten and 

discarded bric-a-brac of humans. Humans can’t see 

the Borrowers, but when young Sho comes to stay 

with his aunt to recover from a childhood illness he 

instantly spies the elfin, 14 year old Arrietty Clock. 

The top local film at the Japanese box office for 2010 

is not just achingly pretty to watch but a fascinating 

project, as the screenplay from Studio Ghibli’s maestro 

animator Miyazaki Hayao revisits a source that was 

also a favourite of Walt Disney. All tickets $5. 


aFGhan caMeleerS 

Dir: Fahim Hashimy, Afghanistan/Aust., 2012, 

60 mins, digital, (classification tbc) 

The story of the ‘Ghans’ – Afghan camel teamsters 

who were essential to the transportation of supplies 

in 19 th and early 20 th century Australia – has been 

told before in Australian cinema and was explored 

in our 2011 series, Australia’s Middle East. 

Afghan-Australian filmmaker Fahim Hasimy’s new 

documentary brings an alternative perspective to 

this heritage, by celebrating the endurance as well 

as the history of a little-known Australian ethnic 

community: South and Central Australia’s fourth 

(or more) generation Afghan-Australians. Hasimy’s 

onscreen filmmaking personality – as a member 

of a new, 21 st century Muslim-Afghan-Australian 

immigrant community – does much to make this 

possible. He coaxes from his subjects a strong a 

sense of tradition and memory, and reconnects it to 

their shared and blended indigenous Australian and 

Afghan islamic origins. For more details of this 

screening, see nfsa.gov.au/arc. 




FOUr claSSic ShOrT FilMS 

Total running time 116 mins, (unclassified 18+) 

Few short films made it into the Sight and Sound top 

250 films of all time. When they did, it was because 

of their extraordinary clarity of expression and spare 

perfection of meaning. Listen to Britain (Dir: 

Humphrey JENNINGS, UK, 1942, 19 mins, 35mm) is 

from British cinema’s cinematic poet of WW2’s home 

front experience, Humphrey Jennings. The emotional 

power of La jetée (Dir: Chris MARKER, France, 1962, 

28 mins, 35mm) comes from its elegance as a sci fi 

fable, and its inspiration in telling its story (almost) 

entirely in still photographs. Yuriy Norshteyn’s Tale 

of Tales (Сказка сказок / Skazka skazok, USSR, 1979, 

29 mins) comes from the great animator of Russian 

folk memory. Finally, Jean Renoir’s adaptation of 

Maupassant’s A Day in the Country (Partie de 

campagne, France, 1936, 40 mins, 35mm) remains 

one of the great examples of the master French 

director’s use of comic frivolity, to mask deeper 

seriousness and real tragedy. 


CULT OF ARC: LYNCHED 

chained AND eraSerhead 

Total running time 179 mins. 

It took a while for writer/director Jennifer Lynch to 

crawl back from her failed debut film Boxing Helena, 

but in recent years the eldest daughter of cult director 

David Lynch has found her groove, particularly with 

the disturbing Chained (Dir: Jennifer LYNCH, USA, 

2012, 94 mins, digital, (MA15+)). Uber character 

actor Vincent D’Onofrio is Bob, a serial killer who has 

with him Tim, the child of one his victims, who was 

just nine when Bob killed his mother. Bob had taken 

him under his wing, and assumed him as protégé. 

Now, Tim must decide whether to carry Bob’s 

work, or finally break free. Plus Daddy’s surreal cult 

masterpiece, Eraserhead (Dir: David LYNCH, USA, 

1977, 85 mins, 35mm, (M)). 


BOND(S) AT 50 

The ipcreSS File 

Dir: Sidney J. FURIE, UK/USA, 1965, 109 mins, 

35mm, (PG) 

New imported 35mm print. 



The SeVenTh cOMpaniOn 

(Седьмой спутник / Sedmoy sputnik) Dir: Aleksei 

GUERMAN/Grigori ARONOV, USSR, 1967, 

89 mins (total running time 143 mins), 35mm, 


After a stint working as an assistant director at the 

Lenfilm studio, Guerman was assigned to his first 

long feature, co-directed by Grigori Aronov. Although 

Guerman would later distance himself from the film 

(‘…I felt like an old, unliked husband,’ he said in a 

1988 interview), The Seventh Companion remains a 

profoundly humane view of ordinary men and women 

caught up in the absurdities of wartime. The film 

unfolds during the ‘Red Terror’ campaign during the 

Civil War. General Adamov (Andrei Popov) is cleared 

of his alleged crimes and released back into society. 

But in the post-revolutionary world he is told that 

‘the fact that you are alive is a misunderstanding…’ 

New, imported 35mm print. Preceded by the 

documentary Guerman: From the Other Side of 

the Camera (Po tu storonu kamery, Dir: Alexander 

Pozdnyakov, Russian, 2009, 52 mins, digital) 

THU 18 APR 11AM 


diarY OF a WiMpY Kid 

Dir: Thor FREUDENTHAL, USA, 2010, 94 mins, 

35mm, (PG) 

The first in the cinematic adventures of wise-cracking 

and socially awkward middle-schooler Greg Heffly, 

his oddball family and friends in his diary (‘it’s a 

journal!’), adapted from the bestselling books by Jeff 

Kinney. All tickets $5. 




TOKYO STOrY 

(東京物語 / Tōkyō Monogatari), Dir: OZU Yasujirō, 

Japan, 1953, 136 mins, 35mm, (PG) 

An elderly couple travel to see their offspring, but are 

met with indifference and ignorance. Ozu’s moving, 

meditative film on mortality has been declared his 

masterpiece. While concentrating on a few and 

simple themes (and surprisingly borrowing from a 

Hollywood ‘weepie’ source, Leo McCarey’s 1937 

Make Way for Tomorrow) in Tokyo Story he and 

screenwriter Noda Kōgo finalised the quiet innovation 

of their elliptic technical and narrative style, perfecting 

it in this most emotionally poignant of films. 





FREE TO MAx PASS HOLDERS. Canberra premiere. 

FRI 19 APR 11PM 


diarY OF a WiMpY Kid: 

rOdricK rUleS 

Dir: David BOWERS, USA, 2011, 99 mins, 35mm, (PG) 

In the second film of the series, Greg’s misguided 

parents try to force a bond between Greg and his older 

and (apparently) cooler brother Rodrick. All tickets $5. 

SAT 20 APR 1.30PM – NOTE EARLY 

START TIME 

cOMradeS 


New, imported 35mm print, courtesy the British 

Film Institute. 








TOKYO STOrY 

(東京物語 / Tōkyō Monogatari), Dir: OZU Yasujirō, 

Japan, 1953, 136 mins, 35mm, (PG) 



MY Friend, iVan lapShin 

(Мой друг Иван Лапшин / Moy drug Ivan Lapshin) 

Dir: Aleksei GUERMAN, USSR, 1984, 100 mins, 


Set in 1935 in the fictional provincial town of 

Unchansk, Guerman’s first film to receive wide 

international exposure – and his only to include 

several colour sequences – unfolds through the 

prism of time, as a present-day narrator recalls his 

youth in a crowded communal flat whose residents 

include the socially awkward police inspector of 

the title. Adapted from popular stories written by 

Guerman’s own father, My Friend, Ivan Lapshin 

wryly chronicles the material deprivations and 

minor satisfactions of communal life during the 

time in which Stalin’s cult of personality became a 

routine part of everyday life. Part adventure, part 

social commentary, and always shot through with 

Guerman’s signature ironic wit, My Friend, Ivan 

Lapshin is a richly complex memory film about a 

‘forgotten’ era. Courtesy ACMI Melbourne. 

cOMradeS 

6 – 20 APR 

The three films of influential Scottish director Bill 

Douglas’ career-defining Trilogy (My Ain Folk (1973) 

My Childhood (1972) My Way Home (1978)) ranged 

between just 40 and 70 minutes, a length that reflects 

their autobiography and intimacy. The scope and 

intention of Douglas’ only other completed feature, 

Comrades was at the very opposite scale: a leftist 

historical epic of over three hours, telling the story of 

the six Dorset farm workers who’s attempt to form a 

union led to convict transportation to Australia and 

fame as the Tolpuddle Martyrs. This difference was to 

be the source of Comrades’ many difficulties. Over 

eight year in production, its completion was delayed 

by Douglas’ often perfectionist working methods, 

frustrations on location in England and Australia, and 

a falling out with initial producer, Ismail Merchant. 

The time taken to make the film must have also 

transformed its meaning. Conceived before Margaret 

Thatcher came to power, it was only completed 

after the 1984 Miners’ Strike and eight years of 

Thatcherism. Cancer unexpectedly cut Douglas’ 

career short in 1991, aged just 57. Retrospectively the 

project’s frustrations now seem tragic. 

For all that, Comrades’ achievement as a film epic 

confirm its maker’s greatness as – ironically – a 

cinematic poet of intimate things and personal feeling. 

In making a ‘counter’ history Douglas was looking for 

a different meaning to ‘historical’ and ‘epic’. Events 

such as the martyrs’ actual trial are passed over in 

favour of attention to the quotidian, daily rhythms of 

their village community. ‘Star’ actors pass by in cameo, 

whilst less familiar faces (particular Robin Soans as 

George Loveless) hold Douglas’ attention. Comrades 

is also a film about how communities tell stories and 

how cinema is just a more recent iteration of that 

tradition. It’s something reflected in the film’s full title, 

A Lanternist’s Account of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. 

Made with local filmmakers like producer David 

Hannay and cinematographer Gale Tattersall, 

Comrades also featured many of Australia’s leading 

actors (including John Hargreaves, Anna Volska 

and Lynette Curran) as well as UK stars like Vanessa 

Redgrave and James Fox in its Australian scenes. None 

the less, the film only had a brief release in Australia 

in the late 1980s and has been unseen locally since. 

This is the first chance for Canberra audiences to see 

Comrades in over 20 years, in a new print struck to 

mark the 175 th anniversary of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. 

(Notes with thanks to Guy Barefoot, screenonline.org) 

Dir: Bill Douglas, UK/Aust., 1986, 183 mins, 

35mm, (M). Courtesy the British Film Institute. 

LIMITED RE-RELEASE SEASON, 

JUST THREE SCREENINGS. 

cUlT OF arc 

MAR – APR 

Getting started at the end of 2012, Cult of Arc gets 

serious in 2013, with regular double servings of cinema 

to make your skin crawl and pulse beat: an eclectic mix 

of new, rare and cult horror, sci-fi, Hammer, thriller and 

action genres, plus many that can only be categorised 

as uncategorisable! Offerings will come from well- 

known filmmakers and actors, and from those whose 

work you have yet to meet. Plus there’ll be the strange 

and wonderful from the film archive – not only the 

NFSA, but we’ll bring them out from their hiding 

places elsewhere in Australia and the world. 

March brings you a very different pair of Zombie 

movies, one from Castro’s Cuba, the other from 

somewhere in a place that will forever be England. 

Then in April it’s a tribute to the rich and strange 

films of the Lynch family filmmakers: father David and 

daughter Jennifer. 

dinGO 

14, 23 APR 

It’s late 1960s outback Australia. Local kid John 

Anderson is hanging about with nothing much to 

do when, almost like a chariot from the gods, a jet 

airliner is forced to land on the town’s bush airstrip. 

Briefly, miraculously, legendary jazz trumpeter Billy 

Cross and his band step from the plane, then perform 

an impromptu gig. It’s all over in a few moments for 

most, but leaves an impression on Anderson; 20 years 

later, still stuck in the town, scrapping a living shooting 

dingos, he still dreams of making it to Paris, to savour 

the magic of Cross’ music and the life of the city’s 

underground jazz clubs. 

Rolf de Heer’s 1991 film had a difficult production, 

was misunderstood by poor reviews and neglected at 

the box office. 20 years on, Dingo’s legendary musical 

pedigree suggests it might be a work ready for re- 

discovery and revival. Billy Cross was the first and last 

dramatic role for real-life jazz trumpet god Miles Davis. 

The score was the work of Davis and a whole team 

of jazz musician legends: not just French composer 

Michel Legrand, but jazz session greats like Alphonse 

Mouzon, Foley and Kenny Garrett. Davis said that 

Dingo’s score was an attempt to ‘…rediscover the 

sound, the ambience of my cool period, the style of 

Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain and Milestones.’ Yet 

director Rolf de Heer’s visuals are also cool evocations 

of outback Australia and our local dreams of distant 

European sophistication, enhanced in a new print from 

the NFSA’s Deluxe/Kodak Project. 

Dingo returns for just two additional 

screenings, due to public demand. 

Dir: Rolf de Heer. Aust./France, 1991, 109 mins, 

35mm, (PG). Courtesy of Vertigo Films and Rolf 

de Heer, and with thanks to Deluxe Australia 

and Kodak (Australasia). 

Sparc: 

KidS’ cineMa 

FROM APR 

spArc is new monthly screening series ideal not just 

for families but also for younger family members who 

might just be movie buffs – and maybe even ‘cinephiles’ 

– in the making. Children’s classics from Australia and 

the world over will be well represented. There will also 

be a few discoveries and hidden treasures, especially 

from the vast creative galaxy of international short and 

feature animation. spArc sessions will also be a place 

for young newcomers to discover the unique experience 

of an ‘archival’ film screening program – and in the 

2010s, for many newcomers to cinema that will be 

the unique experience of movies that really move, on 

celluloid and on a big screen. All cinemas run movies for 

kids. Only at spArc will we be presenting Kids’ Cinema! 

Our spArc weekday school holiday program also 

offers a selection of films for little fellas (and girls, too), 

featuring the three films in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid 

series, adapted from Jeff Kinney’s novels. 

Most tickets just $5. 

SIGHT AND 

SOUND’S 

GreaTeST FilMS 

MAR – APR 

In the second year of every decade, the leading 

UK film journal Sight and Sound conducts what 

has now become cinema’s most renowned and 

authoritative Greatest Films poll. 800 plus film 

critics and programmers and 400 plus film directors 

from around the globe are asked to nominate their 

greatest movies of all time. Since the 1950s, the Sight 

and Sound poll has become a fascinating indice of 

changing taste in cinema and filmmakers. 

However, one constant has always been Orson 

Welles’ Citizen Kane – at the top of the poll since 

1962. Therefore, much of the interest in late 2012 

announcement of the latest poll’s results was in 

whether changes in film criticism and digital media 

– and with it, the emergence of a new generation 

of on-line, blogspot and YouTube-based film 

critics – would reorder the poll’s past trends and 

preferences. Would the long established, ‘Kane-led 

Sight and Sound canon be upset by a post-Star Wars 

dominated selection of films? 

As it was, Citizen Kane was knocked off its 

pedestal. But only just; coming in behind Vertigo 

in the critics’ selection and Tokyo Story and 2001: 

A Space Odyssey in that of the directors’. There 

were some predicable and new trends; the rise 

of Asian cinema, for example. Yet the poll most 

surprised everyone by how little it altered the old 

order. Pre-2000 films still dominant. Film critics and 

films directors still largely agreed with each other. 

Surprisingly, silent cinema actually ascended in new 

critical taste, with three pre-1930 films in the top ten. 

This is a chance for Canberra audiences to reacquaint 

themselves with the masterpieces, or to understand 

what the fuss is about. We’ll tick off most of the top 

ranked films (although we’ll save the silents for later 

in 2013), but also occasional divert to some of the 

alternatives and looming contenders. 

Special thanks to the British Film Institute. 

BOnd(S) aT 50 

MAR – APR 

The ‘mother and father’ (as one critic recently 

put it) of all movie franchises turns 50 this year, 

having survived seven re-skinnings of its central 

character and outliving both its original producers 

and studio. Although there had been espionage/ 

thriller-based franchises since the dawn of the 

feature film (beginning with French cinema’s Nick 

Carter and Fantômas series in the early 1910s), the 

Bond brand remains essential for consideration 

even when the movies have not been essential 

viewing. It’s not just for the way they established 

the business model for modern franchise movies. It’s 

for the way its characters and plots are as durably 

British as a Land Rover; and as easily upgradable 

behind the same badge (something that maybe only 

Batman – amongst other long-standing Hollywood 

movies franchises – can do as well). The Bond series 

is essential in how it reflects changing social and 

geo-political anxieties, starting in the Cold War, 

travelling on through Watergate and the War on 

Drugs, and continuing in the War on Terror. Yet 

it’s also essential for how the early, Sean Connery 

run of Bond movies (beginning with 1962’s Dr. No) 

changed the movies and what audiences wanted to 

get from going to see them. In this, they had just as 

much impact on cinema in the 1960s as Hitchcock’s 

Psycho, Andy Warhol’s experimental films and the 

first works of the French New Wave. Ironically, French 

director Francois Truffaut was the most famous critic 

of James Bond’s assault on ‘classic cinema’, arguing 

that ‘…mass audiences were (now) exposed… to a 

type of cinema which relates neither to life nor the 

romantic tradition but only to other films and always 

by sending them up.’ 

‘Classic’, authorised Bond (the Sean Connery and 

Roger Moore iterations, especially) is now easily 

available in television repertory and DVD markdown 

bins. So we will limit our big screen tribute to just 

a few key titles and to honouring Queanbeyan’s 

own Bond one-off, George Lazenby. Rather, this is 

a chance to explore some precursors and the films 

that send up the send up: the countless illegitimate 

brothers (and odd sister) to the official series; the 

Bond rip-offs, homages, parodies – especially at the 

peak of franchise’s zeitgeist in the mid-1960s and 

including some oddities from the NFSA collection. 

dOn Mcalpine: 

ShOW Me The 

MaGic 

FROM 18 APR 

‘All cinema is a deception – a beautiful 

deception’ (Don McAlpine ACS, ASC) 

Show me the Magic tells the story of Don 

McAlpine (1934-). It’s a journey from a one-horse 

town in outback New South Wales to the heights of 

Hollywood and films like Patriot Games, Predator, 

Peter Pan, Mrs Doubtfire, and Baz Luhrmann’s 

Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge! It weaves 

interviews with directors like Paul Mazursky, Bruce 

Beresford and Gillian Armstrong, with archival 

footage (some from the NFSA collection, but also 

from McAlpine’s own personal film trove) and with 

rare access to the usually closed behind-the-scenes 

world that he inhabits during film productions. We 

especially get a fascinating chance to see McAlpine 

at work on two recent productions: his 50 th film, 

X-Men Origins: Wolverine; and P.J. Hogan’s 

Mental – McAlpine’s 53 rd , but his first digital feature. 

To coincide with our screenings of Show Me the 

Magic, we’ll also run a short tribute selection of just 

a very few of the many Australian and international 

feature films on which McAlpine has been a director 

of photography. 


(classification tbc). 

nOW Open 

TeaTrO Fellini 

The NFSA’s café provides a delicious range 

of light meals and snacks and hot and cold 

beverages. Teatro Fellini is also open before all 

Arc cinema screenings, so why not treat yourself 

and complete your visit to the National Film and 

Sound Archive of Australia. 

OpeninG hOUrS 

Mon − Wed 9am to 5pm, Thu 9am − 7pm 

Fri 9am − 5pm, Sat 11.30am − 7.30pm*, 

Sun 10am − 4.30 pm 

Also open before Arc Cinema screenings. 

*Please note: no main meals after 6.30pm

Arc Calendar March/April - National Film and Sound Archive

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