14th Festival 1967

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 only, since films shown at the Wintergarden could not be repeated at the Orpheum and vice versa.

Censorship was even more vicious after the previous year’s publicity. Shohei Imamura’s The Amourist (Japan) was banned outright, while Michael Papas’ British film The Private Right – about atrocities on Cyprus – was threatened with so many cuts the director withdrew it from the festival. Cuts were also made to Bo Widerberg’s Love ’65 (Sweden) and Palle Kjaerulf Schmidt’s Two People (Denmark).

Veteran director Josef von Sternberg attended the festival for the first Australian screening of his Japanese-made The Saga of Anatahan and the BBC-TV film The Epic That Never Was about his abortive attempt to film I Claudius in 1937. To present his film Adventure Starts, Swedish director Jörn Donner was also in attendance.

An exhibition celebrating cinema from 1957-1967 was held in Manning House at the University of Sydney, which included original set designs, production stills and confidential holograph material.

The festival opened with Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville and John Frankenheimer’s Seconds screened simultaneously, and 32 features were shown in all: Miklos Jancso’s The Round-Up (Hungary), Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (France ) Akira Kurosawa’s Red Beard (Japan), Jerzy Skolimowski’s Barrier (Poland), Karel Kachyna’s Long Live the Republic! (Czechoslovakia), HereIvan Passer’s Intimate Lighting, Leopolda Torre Nirsson’s The Eavesdropper, Eldar Riaznov’s Watch Your Car and Sergei Paradjhanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (both USSR), Florestano Vancini’s Seasons of our Love (Italy), Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s La vie de château (France), André Delvaux’s first film The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short and Roland Verhavert’s Farewells (both Belgium); Anthony Buckley's Forgotten Cinema (Australia), Anthony Simmons’ Four in the Morning (UK), Fons Rademakers’ Dance of the Heron and Nikolai van der Heyde’s Morning of Six Weeks (both Netherlands), Susumu Hani’s Bride of the Andes (Japan), Marcos Madaras’ Harvest (Argentina), Mirceau Murescu’s The Uprising (Romania), Makinen’s and Elstela’s Happy Games (Finland), Alexander Petrovic’s Three (Yugoslavia), Joseph Shalkin’s The Boy Across the Street (Israel), Madhusdana Rao’s Hegh Status (India), Larry Kent’s When Tomorrow Dies and David Secter’s Winter Kept Us Warm (both Canada) and Gregory Markopoulos’ Galaxie (USA).

Shorts included Pierre Étaix’s Insomnia, Claude Berri’s The Chicken, Zoltan Huszarik’s Elegy, Jiri Brdecka’s Why Do You Smile Mona Lisa?, Jerzy Hoffman’s Calvary, Jan Lenica’s Woman as a Flower, Joris Ivens’ Pour le Mistral, Lionel Rogosin’s How Do You Like Them Bananas?, Peter Sykes’ Walkabout to Cornwall, Adrian Ditvoorst’s That Way to Madra; also The Heisters by a certain Tobe Hooper (who, in 1975, would make the sensational Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and three by Don Owen – High Steel, Notes for a Film about Donna and Gail and Ladies & Gentlemen Mr. Leonard Cohen.