The Archive: 60 Years of MIFF
To celebrate 60 Years of MIFF, we present to you the MIFF Online Archive. 59 editions of the Festival are now available to you to browse or search through. We hope the archive will be a resource used by festival goers, film lovers, students, historians and whoever else would like to learn more about the types of films the Festival has screened over the years, or indeed to track the trajectory of the Festival’s curatorship, its Directors and its scope.
A big thank you to our MIFF volunteers and partners who have helped make this archive possible.
Search options currently include: ‘Festival Year’, ‘Director’, ‘Title’, ‘Production Year’, and ‘Country’. Please note: there may appear a few typos here and there as our database comes to terms with special characters (my, there was a huge amount of Eastern European cinema screened at the festival back in the 60s!) and other items that need manual tweaking. We have over 12,000 film titles and over 9000 directors’ names to check over, which we are doing. Similarly, occasionally there just isn’t the credit information (director, year etc) to include so these fields may be left blank, we will aim to fill them in with further research.
Stage 2 development will involve further contextualisation of film content through added articles, links and images. The Archive will be an ongoing body of work post the 60th anniversary.
Enjoy The Archive: 60 Years of MIFF!
The Archive: 60 Years of MIFF
1957
The Sixth Melbourne Film Festival will present over one hundred films from thirty countries – films which the Organising Committee believes show some advancement towards cinematic art or towards knowledge.
A number of countries, including Puerto Rico, Portugal, Bulgaria, Greece, Norway and South Africa, will be represented for the first time in this annual event in the cultural life of Melbourne. The addition of films from these countries is indicative of the Organising committee aim to make the Melbourne Festival international in character and equal in stature to the best overseas film festivals
A programme of specially selected Festival films for senior secondary school children on three mornings at the Union Theatre. Our aim in devising these sessions has been to demonstrate to the young people the type of films a film society can offers to its members.
Concurrently with the Festival, the National Gallery and the Organising Committee have arranged an exhibition of Polish film posters at the National Gallery.
Around Film Polski gathered some of the best of Poland’s artists, young artists like Jan Lenica, and representatives of an older generation, such as Eryk Lipinski, one of the founder of the Polish Poster School, born in 1908. These artists have created poster art, designed in a tradition of taste and elegance which is distinctly Polish.
Film Polski made a gift of the posters to the Festival and their generous gesture will make it possible to circulate this exhibition throughout Australia.
The Australian Institute of Management will present a one day conference on “The use of film in Industry and commerce” in the Physics C. Theatre on Tuesday 4th of June.
Festival Director: Erwin Rado
Programme Advisor: George Lugg
Introduction taken from the 1957 official guide
Festival Director
Erwin Rado
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Festival Program
21 feature films and 89 short films were screened from June 3rd to 22nd
Full Program
Program in Focus
The 1957 Festival, the first for Director Erwin Rado, grouped feature films into 6 programs of double features, and shorts continued to be grouped by topic, including Russian Cinema in Retrospect, Faith and Fantasy and Malayan Scene. Satyajit Ray's debut feature Pather Panchali was screened, commencing a long standing admiration of Ray's work by the festival that culminated in a visit by the Indian director in 1968.
With 6 more features and 22 more short films screened than the previous year, the 1957 program featured 110 films from over thirty countries, and now included films from countries not previously screened in Australia, including Puerto Rico, Portugal, Bulgaria, Greece, Norway and South Africa.
Featured Film
Frenzy (Alf Sjöberg, 1944)
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Featured Film
A Girl In Black (Michael Cacoyannis, 1955)
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