the RICH history OF each Sydney Film Festival
Festivals
1954 | 1st Festival
The Film Users’ Association of NSW, to which most film organisations belonged, organised an inaugural meeting to form a Sydney Film Festival committee. This took place on 13 October, 1953 at the offices of the Canadian National Film Board. It was attended by representatives of the Federation of NSW ...
1955 | 2nd Festival
The University’s Great Hall was added as an extra screening room. A Forum was held on Children's films. New, or relatively new, features included: Jean Cocteau's Orphee, Vittorio de Sica's Miracle in Milan, Rene Clement's Les jeux interdits, Charles Frend's Lease of Life, Teinosuke Kinogasa's Gate o...
1956 | 3rd Festival
By this year the number of closed members to the festival had reached 2000. The University venues remained the same, and a programme of 12 new and five retrospective features was presented. These were: Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (Japan); Orson Welles’ Othello (made in Morocco); Don Siegel’s Riot...
1957 | 4th Festival
For what was to prove a none-too-successful two year experiment, the Festival shifted from the Queen's Birthday weekend in June to the Labor Day weekend in October, in an attempt to take advantage of warmer weather, participate in Waratah Week celebrations and to follow closely the major European fe...
1958 | 5th Festival
British film critic and occasional director, Paul Rotha, was a special guest of the Festival thanks to a generous grant from U.N.E.S.C.O. After a period of some disharmony, the Festival was now working closely with the Melbourne Film Festival, now in its seventh year, and newly recognised by the Int...
1959 | 6th Festival
The festival moved back to June, greatly expanded its duration from four days to 17, and moved outside the University grounds for the first time into the ANZAC House auditorium (the Union Hall, the Teachers College, the Annexe and the Wallace at the University were all retained). Twenty-two features...
1960 | 7th Festival
The demolition of the Union Hall to make way for the new Union Theatre would pose problems over the next two years for SFF at the University of Sydney. The Festival continued its use of ANZAC House, as well as Teachers College, the Annexe, the Wallace, and Chemistry 1 and 3 lecture halls.
For the f...
1961 | 8th Festival
Screenings at ANZAC House were replaced by a new venue, Turner Hall, within the Sydney Technical College (now the University of Technology, Sydney).
The Festival opened with lngmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring and included no less than three films by Luis Buñuel – Nazarin, The Young One and The Crimi...
1962 | 9th Festival
Ian Klava was appointed the Festival’s first full-time director – direction of the Festival had been a part-time activity until that point – but there was still no permanent festival office.
Festival screenings were held in the newly opened Union Theatre, and the number of features screened dropped ...
1963 | 10th Festival
A special guest of the Festival was Mme Kashiko Kawakita, from the Japan Film Council Library.
The Festival opened with the Czech film Baron Munchausen by Karel Zeman.
Twenty-three features were screened in all, among them François Truffaut’s Shoot the Pianist, Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, Andrzej Wajd...
1964 | 11th Festival
For the first time the festival was scheduled to end, instead of start, on the Queen’s Birthday holiday weekend; and for the first time the organisation established itself in a permanent office.
Twenty-three features were presented, including the opener, from Japan, Zenzo Matsuyama’s My Hobo. Severa...
1965 | 12th Festival
The Turner Hall theatre was replaced – for two years – with the Hub Theatre at Newtown.
The Festival opened with Bryan Forbes’ Seance on a Wet Afternoon, and included first features by Miloš Forman (Peter and Pavla), Jacques Demy (Lola) and Istvan Gaal (The Current).
Twenty-four features were shown ...
1966 | 13th Festival
Festival Director Ian Klava, who had resigned at the end of 1965 after running the festival for four years, was replaced by David Stratton.
Censorship, which had been getting steadily more severe during the 1960s, began to affect the festival. Not only had two films offered to the festival by their ...
1967 | 14th Festival
A new screening format was attempted, and the weekday sessions were held at the Wintergarden at Rose Bay and the Orpheum at Cremorne.
On weekends, the Union, Teachers and Wallace Theatres were retained at the University, with the Elizabethan at Newtown replacing the Hub. This system lasted one year ...
1968 | 15th Festival
The festival finally left its Sydney University origins and moved all of its screenings to the Wintergarden Theatre at Rose Bay, where it would remain for six years.
After the traumas of the previous two years there was a deceptive quiet on the film censorship front – no films were cut or banned.
Th...
1969 | 16th Festival
1969 proved to be the watershed year for censorship when the Chief Censor demanded crippling cuts in Swedish director Stig Björkmann’s film I Love You Love; Björkmann, who had arrived in Sydney for the presentation of his film before this news was received, carried an appeal to the Customs Minister ...
1970 | 17th Festival
Though the new Minister in charge of censorship, Don Chipp, proved much more approachable than his predecessors, two films entered in the Festival were effectively banned – Allan King’s A Married Couple (Canada) and Jonas Cornell’s Like Night and Day (Sweden). However, a screening of both films orga...
1971 | 18th Festival
Customs Minister Don Chipp introduced special censorship arrangements governing festivals which in theory made all but recently banned films free for festival audiences. Akira Kurosawa had hoped to attend the Festival, and a retrospective of seven of his films not previously seen in Australia was pr...
1972 | 19th Festival
The Festival opened with Andrei Mihalkov Konchalovsky’s Nest of Gentlefolk, and closed with Vittorio de Sica’s Garden of the Finzi Continis. In all, 35 features were presented: Ken Loach’s Family Life (UK); Dusan Makavejev’s W.R. – Mysteries of the Organism (Yugoslavia); Walerian Borowczyk’s Bianche...
1973 | 20th Festival
Forty of the finest films of Yugoslavia’s Zagreb Studios were shown in a special Zagreb Retrospective, attended by the Studio’s director, the late Zelimir Matko. With censorship now apparently a dead issue, the festival presented eight programs of ‘missing masterpieces’ – some of them previously ban...
1974 | 21st Festival
The Festival celebrated its 21st birthday by moving all screenings to the magnificent old State Theatre (built in 1921) in the heart of the city. Opening Night was ‘A State Occasion’, a positive orgy of nostalgia, with director Reuben Mamoulian present for a re-screening of his 1932 classic Love Me ...
1975 | 22nd Festival
The Festival presented a special ‘Salute to Australian Film’ and published a comprehensive illustrated booklet listing every feature film ever made in this country. Twenty-five famous Australian films – from The Sentimental Bloke to Wake in Fright – were presented in a special retrospective program...
1976 | 23rd Festival
Michelangelo Antonioni and actor Giancarlo Giannini headed a delegation from Italy for a special ‘Salute to Italian Film’. American Gideon Bachmann, who co-ordinated the Italian programme, presented a special session on Pasolini’s last film Sale, 120 Days of Sodom. Luchino Visconti’s last film, The ...
1977 | 24th Festival
The festival introduced a series of special sessions, known as Film Forums, for the presentation of more specialised films, and to give visiting filmmakers an opportunity to answer questions on their work at more time than usually allowed.
Buno Bozzetto and was a guest of the festival this year and...
1978 | 25th Festival
The 25th Festival, revelling in its own legacy, screened a series of restored prints from throughout film history. Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil was screened with an added 15 minutes; also screened were a restored print of the 1920 Australian film Robbery Under Arms, the Garbo-Gilbert films Flesh and ...
1979 | 26th Festival
The demands of the International Federation of Film Producers Associations restricted the ability of the Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals to share all films and the costs associated with them in 1979, reducing the maximum overlap to 30%. This, then, had an impact upon films chosen for that year.
...
1980 | 27th Festival
Retrospectives included the films of Bob Godfrey, a survey of documentary cinema, the films of Michael Rubbo, the films of István Szabó and a newly restored print of Frank Hurley’s 1921 silent documentary Pearls and Savages. The Festival also held evenings of French and British cinema, in addition t...
1981 | 28th Festival
This year saw the first green series at the ANZAC Auditorium, as well as the first Ian McPherson lecture, delivered by John Gillett of the British Film Institute. McPherson had been one of the driving forces behind SFF and served on the festival board from 1954 onwards; he was President from 1968-71...
1982 | 29th Festival
Films screened included Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss, David Carradine’s Americana and Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital. Anderson delivered this year’s Ian McPherson Memorial Lecture.
Tributes to New Zealand and France were held. From David Stratton’s Director’s Forward: “New Zealand...
1983 | 30th Festival
This was David Stratton’s last year as Festival Director and he spent his foreword to the program looking back at his tenure:
…Inevitably, I find myself thinking of the past 18 years and some of my own favourites from that period. But, more particularly, I find I have to talk about some people now....
1984 | 31st Festival
The first year of Rod Webb’s tenure as Festival Director brought films from Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch and Robert Mugge among many others, highlighting a new generation of international filmmakers.
The Opening Night film was Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window – which was initially released in the first y...
1985 | 32nd Festival
This year featured films such as Robert Epstein and Richard Schmiechen’s The Times of Harvey Milk, Alan Parker’s Birdy, Allan Francovich’s Short Circuit, Wim Wender’s Tokyo-ga and Eric Rohmer’s Full Moon Over Paris. In addition to the main program, screenings of new Polish and Swiss cinema were held...
1986 | 33rd Festival
This year is infamous in the history of the Sydney Film Festival for the protests and picketing of the presentation of Jean-Luc Godard’s controversial film Hail Mary. A number of protestors were arrested. From Rod Webb’s Director’s foreword in the 1986 program guide, which was printed prior to the p...
1987 | 34th Festival
With Claude Lanzmann as a festival guest and Ian McPherson lecturer, the 1987 festival highlighted the importance of Lanzmann’s incredible two-part, five and a half-hour Holocaust documentary, Shoah. The film was produced over the course of 10 years, preceded by three and a half years of preparatory...
1988 | 35th Festival
1988 marked the first year of Pat McDonald’s stint as president of the Sydney Film Festival after Ross Tzannes resigned after 16 years in the position. In addition to this, it was the first year in which State Two was used as a second venue, allowing for the operation of the festival to be placed al...
1989 | 36th Festival
There were a few changes to the festival in 1989. Dendy Cinemas took up sponsorship of the Short Film Awards (formerly under the Greater Union banner) and the festival held its first (official) late screening, Midnight mAD-AD-ADness. Perhaps most notable of all, there was a new Festival Director in ...
1990 | 37th Festival
Paul Byrnes, then Festival Director, notes in his opening to the 37th Festival program:
“There’s nothing like standing on the Berlin Wall at midnight, watching East German Army engineers hauling great chunks of cement into the air with cranes, to give one a sense of how much the world has changed in...
1991 | 38th Festival
In addition to Jocelyn Moorhouse’s Proof, films screened this year included Guy Maddin’s Archangel, D.A. Pennebaker’s Company, Robert Mugge’s Deep Blues, Agnieska Holland’s Europa, Europa, Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper’s Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalpyse (the acclaimed documentary abou...
1992 | 39th Festival
This year saw the passing of the most-screened filmmaker (not including retrospectives) in SFF history, Satyajit Ray. From Pat McDonald: “While his films portrayed the everyday lives of his Bengali people, his themes were universally relevant. Pather Pachali and its sequel Aparijito were screened at...
1993 | 40th Festival
This year marked the 40th Anniversary of the Sydney Film Festival and saw the publication of a book compiling an oral history of the festival. There were two other anniversaries: the 20th anniversary of the Travelling Film Festival and the 20th year that the festival had been in the State Theatre.
T...
1994 | 41st Festival
Films this year included Francois Giraud’s Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s contemporary classic Three Colours: White, Steve James’ Hoop Dreams, Werner Herzog’s Bells From the Deep, Ken Loach’s Ladybird, Ladybird and Paul J. Hogan’s Muriel’s Wedding.
Retrospectives th...
1995 | 42nd Festival
It was said that cinema began in 1895, with the Lumière Brothers exhibiting their moving pictures to a paying audience in a Parisian café. As such, this year would mark a hypothetical centennial anniversary of the cinematic form. The wide array of films presented would, in a sense, reflect the ever-...
1996 | 43rd Festival
A mere year after Paul Byrnes wrote of the centenary of cinema in his 1995 programme note, in 1996 he quotes Susan Sontag in her decree that cinema is dead. However, despite noting that “if Sontag is right, then the festival is a wake at the graveside, and we’re all mourners,” he goes on to suggest ...
1997 | 44th Festival
This year saw the government once more decree Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Sàlo, or: The 120 Days of Sodom a banned film, continuing the strained relationship between Australian censors and international cinema. In response to this, the festival initiated a new committee called Watch on Censorship, which i...
1998 | 45th Festival
Paul Byrnes’ final year as Festival Director and the 45th year of the Sydney Film Festival both fell on 1998. On his time, Byrnes wrote:
“If there is one guiding idea behind what I’ve tried to do in selecting films for the festival, it’s that cinema does matter, that it’s more than just an entertai...
1999 | 46th Festival
1999 was Gayle Lake’s first festival with Gayle Lake as Director. Films included Larry Clark’s Another Day in Paradise, Maijid Maijidi’s Children of Heaven, Bill Condon’s Gods and Monsters, Neil Jordan’s In Dreams, Ken Loach’s My Name is Joe, Tom Tykwer’s Run, Lola, Run and Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista ...
2000 | 47th Festival
For the first time in festival history, a pay-as-you-go model was introduced for select screenings. The subscriber model that had been with the festival since its first year showed its first signs of changing to meet modern demand. In contrast to today, where every screening has a pay-as-you go opti...
2001 | 48th Festival
Fittingly, in the year 2001 a Stanley Kubrick documentary was screened at the festival, raising not only an amusing pun but also the importance of looking back at cinema. This year, perhaps more than most, had retrospective screenings that engaged with popular cinema of the past few decades, with th...
2002 | 49th Festival
This year the FIPRESCI Award for Documentary Filmmaking was introduced, following in the footsteps of many other festivals who had introduced the award in 2000. This would put an ever-greater focus on documentary cinema within a festival that had often screened more documentary than narrative cinema...
2003 | 50th Festival
The 50th anniversary of the Sydney Film Festival was a deserved cause for celebration, with the event having successfully transitioned from a university-based gathering to having an essential place in Sydney’s calendar, all the while defending the content of the festival’s films against censorship. ...
2004 | 51st Festival
It was Gayle Lake’s final year as Festival Director and, as she claimed, “the strongest and most diverse of the six festivals I have directed.” Amongst the films screened that year were Jørgen Leth’s and Lars von Trier’s engaging and odd documentary The Five Obstructions, Fatih Akın’s Head-On, Steph...
2005 | 52nd Festival
This was Lynden Barber’s first year as Festival Director. Films screened included Susanne Bier’s Brothers, Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Emir Kusturica’s Life is a Miracle, Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro’s Murderball, Jaco...
2006 | 53rd Festival
This year saw four Australian films premiere at gala events: Mark Lee’s The Bet, Morgan O’Neill’s Solo, Gillian Armstrong’s Unfolding Florence and Andrew Denton and Anita Jacoby’s documentary God on My Side. Peter Ho-sun Chan’s Perhaps Love, which he introduced, and the restoration screening of the ...
2007 | 54th Festival
This year marked the first festival under Clare Stewart as Festival Director. Films screened included Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding, Sarah Polley’s Away From Her, Jonathan King’s Black Sheep, Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain!, John Carney’s Once, Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stor...
2008 | 55th Festival
The SFF took a step forward on the world film festival stage this year with the introduction of the Official Competition, with the winning film to be awarded the Sydney Film Prize and a cash prize of $60,000 – the largest film award in Australia to this date. The inaugural Official Competition entra...
2009 | 56th Festival
Following the previous year’s launch of the new Sydney Film Prize, this year the FOXTEL Documentary Prize was kickstarted. Meanwhile, after a number of gruelling events of up to 16 days and 200+ screenings, the festival moved to a more streamlined 12-day program.
Films screened this year included He...
2010 | 57th Festival
This year 157 films from 47 countries were screened. Featured in the Official Competition were films by renowned directors Michael Winterbottom, Todd Solondz and Brillante Mendoza along with Iranian artist Shirin Neshat; three films direct from Cannes (Heartbeats, The Tree and Palme d’Or winner Uncl...
2011 | 58th Festival
This was Clare Stewart’s last year as Festival Director. The Official Competition included Terrence Malick’s visionary The Tree of Life, Miranda July’s second feature The Future, Australian director Ivan Sen’s Toomelah, Australian director Julia Leigh’s controversial drama Sleeping Beauty, Jeff Nich...
2012 | 59th Festival
Under the curatorial helm of new Festival Director Nashen Moodley, the 2012 festival had its most successful year ever, showcasing 156 films from 51 countries in 49 languages to record audiences.
A highly diverse Official Competition featured Aussie director Cate Shortland’s acclaimed World War II d...
2013 | 60th Festival
Sydney Film Festival celebrated its 60th edition in 2013. Screening 192 films over 12 days and nights, the festival was a great box-office success – new records for both sales and attendance were set.
The festival expanded to the North Shore, holding screenings at the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace ...
2017 | 64th Festival
NASHEN MOODLEY
FESTIVAL DIRECTOR
The Sydney Film Festival is the culmination
of a year of hard work, and in many ways,
the Festival is the same as the films we screen.
Both are the products of people with a wide
range of knowledge, skills, talents and points
of view all working together to create a...
2018 | 65th Festival
NASHEN MOODLEY
FESTIVAL DIRECTOR
Whilst the film landscape continues to change, the cinema experience remains one of the most vital ways to engage with the wider world. In an increasingly fragmented society, we can sit together in a dark room full of friends and strangers to experience something en...
2019 | 66th Festival
NASHEN MOODLEY
FESTIVAL DIRECTOR
“In my films, I always wanted to make people see deeply. I don’t want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.” – Agnès Varda
The idea of seeing deeply, and differently, and sparking a sense of curiosity is very much one that Sydney Film Festival subsc...
2020 | 67th Festival
Nashen Moodley
Festival Director
Welcome to the 67th Sydney Film Festival: Virtual Edition and Awards!
Back in early March, we had 50% of the program in place and were heading towards finalising the 2020 program to present to our audience. As COVID-19 spread at an alarming rate across the world, an...
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.