21st Festival 1974

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 Tonight, with a full orchestral stage show preceding the film. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam performed the opening ceremony.

During the festival, a special retrospective of 21 favourites from previous festivals was presented. The Travelling Film Festival was formed to take some of the most popular festival presentations to country centres. A mini-Mamoulian retrospective included City Streets, Song of Songs and The Mark of Zorro.

Thirty-nine new features were presented. Two rising New Hollywood icons presented seminal early work: Francis Ford Coppola (The Conversation) and Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets). Work from other noteworthy directors included Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Roublev (USSR); Eric Rohmer’s Love in the Afternoon, Claude Chabrol’s Red Wedding, and Bertrand Tavernier’s first feature The Clockmaker of St Paul (all France); Satyajit Ray’s Distant Thunder (India); Michelangelo Antonioni’s China and Marco Leta’s Black Holiday (both Italy); and Paul Verhoeven’s Turkish Delight (Netherlands). Wim Wenders’ The Fear of the Goalkeeper and Maximilian Schell’s The Pedestrian represented the West German New Wave. Also two important Australian events were held, as Peter Weir introduced his first feature The Cars That Ate Paris and Esben Storm presented his feature debut, 27A. The festival closed with a 70mm presentation of Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers.

Argentine director Raymundo Gleyzer’s The Traitors was screened and he attended the festival. Sadly, two years later he was the victim of a kidnapping in sinister circumstances. He is still officially missing nearly 40 years later.

Other screenings were Alain Tanner’s Return from Africa and Claude Gorretta’s The Invitation (both Switzerland); Kon Ichikawa’s The Wanderers, Shohei Imamura’s History of Postwar Japan and Yoshida’s Coup d’Etat (all Japan); Don Shebib’s Between Friends (Shebib was in attendance) and Denys Arcand’s Rejeanne Padovani (both Canada); Zoltan Huszarik’s Sindbad and Pal Zolnay’s Photography (both Hungary); Krzysztof Zanussi’s Illumination and Andrzej Wajda’s The Wedding (both Poland); Otakar Vavra’s Days of Betrayal (Czechoslovakia); Rauni Mollberg’s Earth Our Sinful Song and Risto Jaarva’s One Man’s War (both Finland); James Scott’s Adult Fun and Peter Robinson’s Asylum (both UK); Victor Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive (Spain); Manuel Herrera’s Giron (Cuba); Tomislav Radic’s Timon (Yugoslavia); Georgy Shengelaya’s Pirosmani and Svetlana Drujinia’s Heart’s Desire (both USSR – both filmmakers attended); and Andre Delvaux’s Belle (Belgium).

Shorts included: Ray’s The Inner Eye, Zoltan Huszarik’s Angelus, Gillian Armstrong’s Gretel, Nagisa Oshima’s Yunbogi’s Diary, Robin Lehman’s Undercurrents, Frank Mouris’ Frank Film, Michael Rubbo’s The Man Who Can’t Stop, Alexander llic’s The Owl, Vlatko Gilic’s Love, Bruno Bozzetto’s Opera, Pascal Aubier’s The Soldier and the Three Sisters, Kihachiro Kawamoto’s The Demon, Bill Douglas’ My A in Folk and Juraj Herz’ Sweet Games of Last Summer.