9th Festival 1962

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 to 19. Before that the number of films presented each year had been increasing steadily.

The Festival opened with Jerome Hill’s The Sand Castle (USA), and among the highlights were two French films: Jean Renoir’s recently restored classic The Rules of the Game, and Claude Chabrol’s feature debut Le Beau Serge.

Also in the programme: Satyajit Ray’s Two Daughters, Fons Rademakers’ The Knife, Kaneto Shindo’s The Island, Konrad Wolf’s Professor Mamlock (East Germany), Servando Gonzalez’ Yanco (Mexico), Janusz Morgenstern’s See You Tomorrow (Poland), Baruch Dienar’s They Were Ten (Israel), Zbynek Brynych’s Skid (Czechoslovakia), Janos Hersko’s The Iron Flower (Hungary) Yueh Feng’s The Deformed (China), France Štiglic’s Ballad about the Trumpet and the Cloud (Yugoslavia), Tengliz Abuladze’s Another Woman’s Children and Georgy Daniela’s and Igor Talankin’s A Summer to Remember (both USSR) and Peter Palitszch’s Mother Courage and Her Children (East Germany).

Critics’ Choice screenings of John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage and John Frankenheimer’s The Young Stranger were presented, and there was a tribute to Australian cinematographer Arthur Higgins (who had shot many of our great silent films including The Sentimental Bloke and On Our Selection).

Short films included: John Schlesinger’s The Class and Terminus, Jan Nemec’s A Loaf of Bread, Henning Carlsen’s Old People, Norman Mclaren’s Opening Speech, Wolf Koenig’s Lonely Boy, John Krish’s Let My People Go, Pierre Étaix’s Happy Anniversary, John Halas’ For Better for Worse and Chris Marker’s Description of a Struggle.