5th Festival 1958

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 International Federation of Film Producers' Associations (FIAPF). Thirteen new features were presented, including one from Australia, Lee Robinson's Dust in the Sun, with Chips Rafferty. The others were Rene Clair’s Porte des lilas (France), Mikhail Kalatazov s The Cranes are Flying (USSR), Andrzej Wajda's Kanal and Alexander Ford's Wrecks (both Poland), Paul Verhoeven’s The Cold Heart and Vaclav Gajer’s Born in 1921 (both East Germany), two Hungarian films by Zoltan Fabri, Merry go Round and Professor Hannibal, and three from Asia -- Masaichi Nagata's The Precipice (Japan), Raj Kapoor's Jaqteraho (India) and Lee II’s Wedding Day (South Korea). Short films included John Heyer's The Forerunner, Lindsay Anderson's Every Day Except Christmas, Bert Haanstra's And There Was No More Sea, Wolf Konig's and Colin Low's City of Gold, Norman McLaren's A Chairy Tale, and Harry Watt's People Like Maria. A special Saturday Midnight Matinee was held, screening vintage Australian films True Story of the Kelly Gang and The Romance of Runnibede.