Abstract

A study of the history and development of cinephilia – the serious love of cinema – in Australia from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. Concentrating mainly on the capitol cities of Melbourne and Sydney, and on the documented traces left behind such as programme notes and independently published magazines, this history starts with small, intense film clubs, intersects with the stirrings of the filmmaking renaissance in Australia in the 1970s, and ends with both the spilling of cinephilia into pop subcultures (such as the music, literature and art worlds), and its sometimes stern revision and critique within academic film theory curricula. Issues of elitism and sexism within cinephilic circles are discussed, and a positive notion of cultural populism is proposed.

Keywords: populism, cinephilia, film criticism, film theory, popular culture, film history

For me, a voice, the voice of a father, spoke quietly in the warm darkness of the Ashril Cinema in Greensborough in the days before it was buried beneath the shopping complexes.

It spoke of Randolph Scott riding tall in the saddle, of Spencer Tracy surveying his empire from a well-used armchair in Father of the Bride [1950], of Alan Ladd riding slowly away into the romantic hills of Shane [1953], and many, many more.

It spoke as only a father can speak to a son, from a vast pool of mysterious knowledge to which only those who love the movies – as distinct from those who merely watch them – can have access.

Now that voice speaks in different tongues from different faces …

Perhaps the role once played by the father is itself no more than a part in an ancient rite, tolerated only for the sake of custom, or out of nostalgia. And perhaps the appeal of the movie hosts lies in the way they provide us with a way of remembering that “once upon a time …”.

Budd Boetticher Westerns are better than a beautiful dream because we live them.

Cinephiles are cut off from the most elementary truths of existence.