02.05.2023 •

The University of Sydney and SFF

From 1954 to 1967, the University of Sydney was home to the Sydney Film Festival. Go back in time and explore Sydney Film Festival’s roots in the University of Sydney and our enduring partnership over 70 years.
 
In 2023, the University of Sydney and Sydney Film Festival once again join forces in a new partnership supporting the Living Archive website and the ongoing preservation of our film culture. Community contributions to the Living Archive will continue the legacy of a festival born of and with continuing connection to its community. To celebrate this shared history: each year, 3 new critical reflections by USYD scholars will be added to the Archive. The first of these will be announced and posted to the Archive later in 2023.
 
Let’s take a look at a selection of ephemeral pieces from the early university film group days, including hand-made posters, flyers, bookmarks and the SUFG’s triannual bulletins, precursors of The Festival’s program guide.

The first Sydney Film Festival was held on 11 June 1954 – an unforgettably chilly winter’s night, by all accounts – at The University of Sydney. The Festival was organised by a motley committee of cinephiles representing various groups of Sydney’s film societies.  They were determined to create a local festival which would allow them to show otherwise inaccessible films in a setting where they could celebrate cinema, exchange ideas and explore other worlds.

In the early 1950s, there were few films showing anything but mainstream British and American films in Australia. As an art form, cinema spoke directly to a post-war society with a prevailing interest in self- education and a connection to a wider global community. Non-mainstream films, particularly international films, were only viewed through screenings held by film societies, which were, due to increasing public interest in cinema, steadily increasing in membership.

Of the various film societies involved in SFF’s origination, Sydney University Film Group (SUFG) and Sydney University Film Society (SUFS) were the most instrumental in the Festival’s creation and its operation. In 1949, SUFG held one of the earliest film festivals in Australia, a precursor to SFF, which ran for free at the university over six nights. They also held screenings of non-commercial films, as well as lectures exploring the aesthetics of cinema, with the purpose of appreciating film as an intellectual art form to combat views that film was just a medium for entertainment.

On the other hand, the Sydney University Film Society screened Hollywood films, consisting largely of Engineering students interested in the technicalities of film projection. The two groups became rivals of sorts, but with one group well-versed on the mechanics of film and the other on its artistic value, the production of the first Sydney Film Festival within the University naturally called for a collaboration between the two rivals, with SUFS members acting as projectionists and tech support, and SUFG members using their festival experience to sell tickets and source films.

The films were screened in four (very icy) halls in USYD’s Camperdown campus over four days – the Union Hall, the Sydney Teachers’ College, the Wallace Theatre and an annexe to the Medical School – using borrowed projectors. The assorted program of 10 films ­–  reflective of the NSW film community and their interests – was designed to make it possible for subscribers see every film. The archive contains anecdotes from festival veterans who remember the air of excitement and camaraderie surrounding the Festival’s days at USYD. Subscribers rushed from screening to screening, program guides in hand, often stopping to talk with other festival goers about the films they’d seen. Others picnicked in between films, setting down blankets on the university lawns and pulling out packed lunches, in rapt discussion with fellow cineastes. The university halls were notorious for their chilliness in the winter and the seating was uncomfortable. But festival goers were prepared to endure it for art.

Bob Sitsky, a regular festivalgoer in those years, recalls: “I remember watching films at SFF in the Wallace Theatre in the early 1960s. In June, in the unheated Wallace Theatre at night, it was absolutely freezing. Me and my friend Peter Wagner had our coats and gloves on, and still were very cold. One had to be very dedicated to sit through a whole film.” The promise of a festival offering something other than Hollywood cinema was so intriguing for some that one subscriber – Barrie Brown – took a 15-hour overnight steam train to the 1956 Festival, beginning a longstanding membership and association with SFF.

Another festival subscriber, Brenda Saunders remembers one year: “I was a student at the National Art School when we went to the Festival at the University of Sydney over the long weekend in June. I remember the trace of rotten-egg gas wafting over the raked seating in the science lecture room. Bunsen burners and tripods outlined against the grainy images of classic [films]. Magic!“

In the 1954 program, the Festival’s first Chairman, Professor Alan Stout, wrote the following words: “The Committee is deeply grateful to the University of Sydney for its hospitality, and to the Teachers’ College for the loan of its Hall. Without these and the co-operation of the Sydney University Film Society, of the Women’s Union (Manning House) and of the Men’s Union, this pioneering enterprise would not have been possible.

And this is pioneering. None of us is fool-hardy enough to feel sure that no mistakes have been made or that the unexpected may not upset the best-laid plans. What we are confident of is that, given goodwill and co-operation, troubles will be overcome.

This is only the first Sydney Film Festival. We hope, with your help and profiting by our experience, not only to make it an annual event, but to make it better each year…”

SFF has come a long way since the days it was held at the University of Sydney, but the Festival’s relationship with the University has endured over the last 70 years.

In 2019, USYD and SFF collaborated to make ‘In Frame’ – a series which engaged University of Sydney academics and researchers to produce engaging and entertaining videos that helped contextualise a particular perspective or issue presented in a selection of films from the 2019 program. SFF audiences were able to enrich their understanding of these films and their topics. Click on the links below to re-watch the USYD Academics and Films featured in the series. 

Sydney University ‘In Frame’ Series

Bruce Isaacs: ‘High Life’ In Frame, 2019

Danielle Celermajer: ‘Anthropocene The Human Epoch’ In Frame, 2019

Mark Ledbury: ‘Never Look Away’, In Frame, 2019

Tim Soutphommasane: ‘The Final Quarter’, In Frame, 2019

71 years of cinema, conversation and community

We acknowledge Australia’s First Nations People as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land, and pay respect to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, upon whose Country SFF are based.

We honour the storytelling and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia.

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