
When
Wed 12 Nov - Wed 19 Nov 2025
See below for additional related events
1975 was a watershed year in Australian political, cultural and social life. It is also a key moment in the Australian film “renaissance”, often seen as a dividing line between the years of peripatetic, sometimes virtually non-existent feature-film production that mark the long era after World War II and the relative boom in filmmaking that followed the establishment of the Australian Film Commission (AFC) in 1975 and the success of films like Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock in the same year. This was, of course, a tumultuous time that witnessed major changes in cultural policy, important opportunities opened up by the Whitlam Labor Government elected in 1972, challenging economic conditions, and significant developments in women’s rights, multiculturalism and the recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty.
Many accounts of Australian cinema in this important year overstate the importance of films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and what they represent as well as the activities of the AFC. They also tend to undervalue the important groundwork done in the early 1970s to help kickstart this “revival”. But there is no doubting the extraordinary diversity of the films made and released in 1975 and what they can tell us about Australia at that pivotal moment.
This season brings together a diverse selection of features, documentaries and experimental films released in and reflecting on the events of 1975, many highlighting the legacies of workers’ rights, emerging inner-city subcultures, the belated recognition and documentation of queer identity and the appalling treatment of the traditional owners of the land. Marking the passage of 50 years, this season brings together such celebrated films as the scandalous Pure Shit (1975) and the iconic Sunday Too Far Away (1975) with a range of lesser known, but equally important works. It also includes two of the earliest cinematic reflections on the traumatic sacking of the Whitlam Government: the essayistic “documentaries” November Eleven (1979) and Exits (1980).
About Melbourne Cinémathèque
Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.
Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven.
