You've championed diverse stories
Characters on screen reflect who we are and who we can be. You help ACMI show wide-ranging genres and platform culturally diverse and minority communities, including festival partners.
Last year:
- The Focus on Tony Leung Chiu-wai spotlighted one of Hong Kong's greatest movie stars.
- Well-known auteurs were profiled in the Focus on Wim Wenders and Focus on Lav Diaz.
- A groundbreaking program of queer Chinese cinema recorded an outstanding attendance of 8,000 patrons.
A special thanks goes to leadership donors Konfir Kabo and Monica Lim for funding the Spotlight on Indonesian Horror – part of our multi-year survey of horror in the Asia Pacific.
Through New Voices in Australian Cinema we celebrated 37 emerging Australian film makers. The program included
- a short film series by Bus Stop Films - a disability led film collective
- a quintessentially Melbourne story: Westgate (Adrian Ortega), about a migrant woman's single parenting and her father's death in the Westgate bridge collapse and
- an unsettling story set in regional NSW of an imaginary friend and a couple’s shared joke that becomes something more troubling in Alphabet Lane (James Lithchfield).
Festival partners access subsidised venue hire and ACMI’s devoted, professional support. Last year we welcomed the Chinese Independent Film Foundation and the National Indian Film Festival of Australia. While young Victorian talent was showcased through the Victorian Curriculum Authorities Top Screen, and women and gender diverse makers through the Melbourne Women in Film Festival.
You’ve supported learners from Prep to Year 12 to make and think critically about screen media
Young people need the skills to produce and critically assess screen content. Media literacy is embedded into all ACMI programs, and we’re a founding member of the Media Literacy Alliance. You help us teach young people to create, critique and communicate.
Programs last year ranged from Fairytales and Fantasy exploring film crew roles and green screens for Prep to Grade 2 students, to Text, Treasure & Adventure Game Design and the LGBTQIA+ Young Filmmakers Workshop for older learners.
ACMI’s film program for education spans family favourites such as Paddington 2, culturally significant Australian works including Rabbit-Proof Fence, and senior secondary VCE texts such as Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Students delve deeper into contemporary screen culture through talks like Representation Now, exploring how social values are reflected and shaped by who we see on screen and who’s behind the camera. While Changing the Game explores the history of videogames through a lens of accessibility and representation.
Last year:
- 75 First Nations secondary students explored game-based careers with leading First Nations industry creatives in Playful Careers.
- Your support helped give 85,000 students and 1,600 teachers the unique value of an ACMI Education program.
- Your gifts to the School Access Fund opened a world of screen learning to over 1,300 students facing social disadvantage.
You’ve increased access to extraordinary exhibitions
By supporting our free exhibitions, you enabled over 390,000 people to experience the Story of the Moving Image last year. Nearly 50,000 people attended Play School: Come and Play!, many visiting ACMI for the first time.
Across Australia and around the world, 200,000 people enjoyed an ACMI exhibition at a touring partner venue. By helping us to take our programs on the road you share the wonder of films, film-making and video art with an increasingly wider audience.
- A highlight of last year was taking CHARGE! Agincourt by Back to Back Theatre to Geelong Arts Centre and its community of origin. This work was commissioned through a generous leadership donation by Rachel Griffiths and Andy Taylor.
- Created in collaboration with the ABC, Play School: Come and Play! brought children and families behind the scenes of one of Australia’s most enduring TV shows. This hands-on exhibition supported early critical learning by showing how screen stories are made.
- Our immersive exhibition Works of Nature, developed with British digital collective Marshmallow Laser Feast, toured to Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, New Zealand, and our playable interactive exhibition Game Worlds is scheduled to follow.
ACMI is a world leader in international collaborative exhibition development, and a valued partner for Australian venues. The Future and Other Fictions was expanded with Asia-focused commissions and regional perspectives by the ArtScience Museum Singapore. While four exhibitions toured to 11 regional and remote partner galleries and museums. Your support positions us to reach further.
You’ve invested in a home for screen professionals and dynamic industry relationships
From ACMI X co-working spaces to industry conferences we connect people, technology and ideas to shape screen practice. Your support nurtures a lively community of screen professionals and their art.
ACMI X is screen professionals working together in the heart of ACMI.
In 2025-26 this creative workforce included practitioners in film and TV, game design, art practice, Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM), festivals and touring, screen education and academia.
To foster a thriving, creative ecosystem ACMI also hosts ACMI X Works-in-Progress (WIP) Nights and ACMI Crew Nights where filmmakers and on-set craftspeople keen to find inspiration and assistance can make new working partnerships and screen sector friends.
Last year:
- ACMI co-presented a WIP Night with VicScreen, showcasing five new games developed through the VicScreen Originate Games initiative.
- We partnered with Tilde - Australia’s trans & gender diverse screen festival, Screen Presence - the network for Asian Australian screen practitioners, and the disability led filmmaking organisation, Bus Stop Films for Crew Nights that reached 400 filmmakers.
- These free and informal events continue to attract creators, gamers and audiences of all ages.
Last year ACMI was the home for High Score, Australia’s premier game audio conference, and the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC), whose theme was safeguarding truth in an age of misinformation. With your support we will continue building screen industry networks, centred at Australia’s home for screen culture.
You support Australia’s only museum for videogames
The story of the moving image cannot be told today without including videogames. This vital form of play for millions of Australians also represents diverse identities and brings people together. Your support last year allowed us to connect players, families and game-makers.
Last year:
- From September 2025 to March 2026 we presented videogames as cultural worlds, combined rare behind-the-scenes materials from Australian and international studios and energised the gallery space with competitive gaming stations and tabletop role-playing for the Game Worlds exhibition.
- We hosted Bennett Foddy in conversation. This internationally acclaimed Australian developer and philosopher pioneered ‘rage games’ designed to be intentionally frustrating to provoke emotional investment.
- Healthy screen time, games beneficial for child development and parents’ pressing questions were the subject of panel discussion Videogames and Your Family with international expert from the Raising Children Network – Derek McCormack, the host of ABC’s Good Game – Angharad Yeo and academic Taylor Hardwick.
- Our Women, Trans and Gender Diverse Gamers Club continued to meet monthly throughout the year, bringing together underrepresented gaming communities, as well as hosting the developers of the games 1000xResist and PROXIMATE.
From October 2026 ACMI became the curator of Melbourne International Games Week (MIGW), following last year's sold-out MIGW keynote talk, and the Games for Change summit which engaged 400 participants. Last year we also commissioned four microgames from local developers with grants ranging from $5,000 to $10,000. Your support gives us the freedom to support game-makers in this way.
You've saved 450 historic films and tapes
With the volume of new screen content created every day, it has never been more important to archive and revisit our screen past. Protecting and digitising screen history helps us to understand and evaluate what we see today and will see tomorrow. You provide essential resources for this meticulous work.
Last year:
- Contemporary filmmakers, academics, educators and the public gained easier access to 450 film and videotape works that were digitised by our collection experts.
- We developed a robust foundation for future collection planning and reporting through a whole-of-collection valuation. Last completed in 2021, this process makes sense of this varied and precious asset, belonging to the people of Victoria.
- Key items acquired into the ACMI Collection included the ACMI Gallery 2 commission Delivery Dancers Arc: 0° Receiver by South Korean artist Ayoung Kim, unique videogame consoles, original artwork from the Australian animated feature Grendel Grendel Grendel (1981) and documentary content from the 1960s - 1980s.
Thank you for being one of ACMI’s precious, loyal donors and making all of this possible.
Devotee
The Allsopp Family
Rachel Griffiths AM
Konfir Kabo & Monica Lim
The Mordant Family
Aficionado
Annette Blonski & Martin Bartfeld AM KC
Sally Browne AM
Seb Chan & Family
Jan Chapman AO
Michael Cowen & Sharon Nathani (via Resonance Fund)
Susanne Dahn AM (via APS Foundation)
Suzanne Davies
Rosemary Forbes & Ian Hocking
Anita Goulding
Sue Harper
Nannette Hunter
Peter & Diane Lewinsky
Scott Lyon
Janet Matton AM
Natalie Miller AO
Traudl Moon
Liahn Nortjé
Nathan & Susan Pinskier
Sophie Quinn-Graham
Emile & Caroline Sherman
Lachlan Simpson
Sarah Slade
Ross Sparks
Andrea Vasarab
Rosemary Walls
Wiegard Family
Anonymous (1)
Admirer
Marty Askew
Angela Baker
Kaye Cleary
Karen & Michael Corry
Mary Dyer
Rami & Jess Eltchelebi
Ian Forsyth
Dr Julie Landvogt & Mr Michael Landvogt
Sandra Lordanic
Melbourne Movie Makers Club Inc.
Lucy Roberts
Britt Romstad
Lesley Speed
Pinky Watson
Fred Worley
Lydia Zhang
Richard Zimmermann
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Fan
Nadia Banihali
Jan Begg
Lesley & Brian Burgess
Yung En Chee
Mandy Creswick
L de Zoete
Chris Egan
Robert Ellis
Elly Fink
Patrick Fitzgerald
John Gratton
Joanne Hardy
Harris Walker Family
Fiona Henderson
Helen Hill
Belinda Kendall-White
Jack Kirszenblat
Julia Lambert
Gabrielle Lim
Kay McVey
Kaylene ONeill
Matt O'Neill
David Raphael
Catherine Roberts-Burdett
Deni Rohan
Georgina Russell
Helen Sweeting
John Thwaites
Matthew Tompkins
John & Susan Warburton
Liz Watts
Rosemary White
Charles Zika
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