8th Festival 1961

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 Criminal Life of Archibaldo de Ia Cruz.

Twenty-seven features in all were presented; these included the first features of Carlos Saura (The Delinquents) and Fons Rademakers (Village on the River), and two films by the Hungarian Laszlo Ranody (For Whom the Larks Sing and Be Good until Death). Also: Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, Satvaiit Ray’s The Music Room, Leopolda Torre Nilsson’s House of the Angel (Argentina), Josef Heifits’ Lady with the Little Dog (USSR), Jiri Weiss’ Romeo and Juliet and Darkness (Czechoslovakia), Edvin Laine’s Unknown Soldier (Finland), France Štiglic’s The Ninth Circle (Yugoslavia), Viktor Gertler’s Red Ink (Hungary), Jiří Krejčík’s The Higher Principle (Czechoslovakia), Ivan Pyriev’s White Nights (USSR), Louis Daquin’s Muddy Waters (West Germany), Chin Shan’s Storm (China), lse’s The Bride’s Peak (Japan), Astrid Henning-Jensen’s Pan (Denmark), Slaton Dudlow’s Love’s Confusion (East Germany), and Robert Daren’s To Love Is Enough (France).

A Critics’ Choice re-screening of Jacques Becker’s Casque d’or was also included. There was also a tribute to Australian cinematographer Frank Hurley.

Short films included: François Truffaut’s Les mistons, Bob Godfrey’s Polygamous Polonious, Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, Henning Carlsen’s The Cyclist, Colin Low’s and Roman Kreiter’s Universe, Dušan Vukotić’s Piccolo, Peter Finch’s Antonito, John Hubley’s Moonbird, Norman Mclaren’s Lines Vertical Lines Horizontal and John Schlesinger’s The Innocent Eye.