The Institute’s 2024 Annual General Meeting will be held on...
This special edition of our regular Twilight Talks series will feature speakers discussing the history of cinema in Ballarat, complimenting our free exhibition. Just a year after the Lumière brothers invented the cinematograph in 1895, the first screenings were held at the Mechanics’ Institute, meaning many had their first ever experience of ‘moving pictures’ in our beautiful Minerva Theatre.
Since then, thousands of movies have been screened in the theatre through its many iterations, including at the Vegas 70 theatre which is being reactivated for this year’s Heritage Week. Come along from 5.30pm to grab a drink and wander through the exhibition in the Williamson Foyer, the former candy bar of the cinema, before the talk.
The BMI’s Twilight Talks series has been a forum for sharing fascinating history and radical futures since 2001, check out our website for upcoming talks.
Not the Last Picture Show: The Lost City of Melbourne
Gus Berger’s film The Lost City of Melbourne documents some of the many grand theatres, cinemas and buildings across ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ which were obliterated at the whim of shifting – and short-lived – tastes.
Drawing on archival footage and photographs from the National Film and Sound Archive and the State Library of Victoria, as well as interviews with historians and experts, the film traverses lost pockets of the city which were sacrificed to the altar of the ‘modern’ from the 1950’s to 1970’s.
The Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute is delighted to be screening the documentary The Lost City of Melbourne with a live conversation with director and producer Gus Berger. Berger is also owner-operator of the Thornbury Picture House, and the pop-up Blow-Up Cinemas.
The film will be screened in the beautifully restored Minerva Theatre, which debuted the invention of the cinematograph for Ballarat audiences in 1896 and functioned as a cinema for much of the 20th century.
All funds raised from the screening will support the work we do to keep our grand 1860’s building open to the public, and to continue our purpose to serve the community of Ballarat as intended from our inception 165 years ago. We continue to operate as an independently-run, not-for-profit organisation, one of the last remaining of 1,200 mechanics’ institutes across the state.
Speaker: Gus Berger | Filmmaker
Gus Berger is the director & producer of this film and a Melbourne based filmmaker
When both of his businesses were forced to close as part of the Victorian lockdowns – Gus started to formulate a film on his city that was in a whole world of pain. Empty streets and shuttered shops. Closed schools & full hospitals. He started to look at what Melbourne was like during its boom years and was not only amazed at the pioneering and enterprising people that shaped the city at the end of the 19th century but was also shocked by the size & beauty of some of its buildings – buildings that are sadly no longer with us.
He wondered what happened to the glorious cinemas that were on every street corner and why the grand hotels that hosted Mark Twain & Agatha Christie were no longer standing. What happened in Melbourne in the mid 1950s that brought them all down?
So began a project of trawling through online photographs at the State Library of Victoria, watching old film within the NFSA archives, reading books on Melbourne history and conducting interviews with experts on Melbourne in his cinema foyer between lockdowns.
As Melbourne slowly emerged from its multiple lockdowns and Gus’ cinema was allowed to re-open, a feature documentary called The Lost City of Melbourne was born.
Starting at 6pm (bar open at 5.30pm), close 8pm.
Cost: $15 general admission | $10 BMI members
Thanks to the support of Community Bank Buninyong
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