Festival Archive 1952-2019

The MIFF online archive contains 68 past editions of the festival (1952–2019) for 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 MIFF has screened over the years, or to track the trajectory of the festival’s curatorship, its directors and its scope.

Search options currently include: ‘Festival Year’, ‘Film Title’, ‘Director’ and ‘Country’.

A big thank you to our MIFF volunteers and partners who have helped make this archive possible.

Please note: this archive is an ongoing body of work. With over 12,000 film synopses and more than 9000 directors’ names, 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. Similarly, sometimes the credit information (director, year etc) isn’t available so these fields may be left blank; we are slowly filling these in with further research. 


MIFF1957

MIFF1957 Festival Program

Festival Program
21 feature films and 89 short films were screened from 3 June to 22 June
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)
More

Featured Film 
A Girl In Black (Michael Cacoyannis, 1955)
More

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

Erwin Rado

Select Festival

Search the film archive