CINEMA REBORN LAUNCHES ITS 2026 SYDNEY & MELBOURNE PROGRAMS

Here's some links to the selection for Cinema Reborn's eighth season of restored classic cinema. There will be 22 programs screened over 31 sessions from 1-10 May in Sydney at the Ritz Cinemas Randwick and from 8-17 May in Melbourne at the Lido Cinemas Hawthorn. Click on the cinemas names and it will take you straight through to the Cinema Reborn pages.

You may also click on this link to go through to Cinema Reborn’s own website. There you will find a page for each film with links through to bookings in Sydney and Melbourne. You will find all the long program notes for each film. They have been written by a community of Australian and international critics and scholars and provide some superb insights into the program. The long notes have been edited by Anne Rutherford and will also appear, along with additional material, in our printed catalogue on sale at Cinema Reborn’s Information Desk during the seasons. 

First up here are some links to our opening and closing films and to our Saturday Centrepiece. 

OPENING FILM

DAYS AND NIGHTS OF THE FOREST (Satyajit Ray, India, 1970)

‘To explain why Days and Nights in the Forest is a masterpiece is a bit like explaining why flowers are beautiful: the film’s glories are so natural and self-evident that describing them feels redundant.’– Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader

Days and Nights in the Forest

Days and Nights in the Forest

To read the notes by Dr Helen Goritsas Click Here

SATURDAY CENTREPIECE

THIEF (Michael Mann, USA, 1981)

‘Michael Mann … is one of the most inspired stylists in American cinema today, but it was all there from the start. In Thief, his first feature, you have echoes of [Jean-Pierre] Melville … a sharp eye for realism, but also profound human characters with precisely drawn relationships, and great acting.’ – Olivier Assayas

 

To read the notes by Adrian Martin Click Here

In Sydney at the session on Saturday 2 May  at 6.45pm Thief  will be introduced by  Blake Howard. In Melbourne at the session on Saturday 9 May a 6.45pm Thief will be introduced by Anna Dzenis

CLOSING FILM

ÉL (Luis Buñuel, Mexico, 1953)

‘After years of neglect, Buñuel’s corpus before Viridiana is finally getting recognised as the subversive achievement it is, and this raving melodrama is a key work – an ostensibly orthodox “woman’s film” trapped in the full nelson of Uncle Luis’s ardour for psychosexual irrationality.’– Michael Atkinson, Sight and Sound

Él

To read the notes by Janice Tong Click Here

In Sydney at the session on Sunday 10 May at 6.00pm Él will be introduced by  Stefan Solomon. In Melbourne at the session on Sunday 17 May  at 6.30pm  Él  will be introduced by Nadine Whitney

CHARITABLE DONATIONS

Since our inception supporters have continued to ensure that the annual season is able to present the very latest and very best international and Australian film restorations.

Tax deductible charitable donations have enabled us to keep our admission charges to regular Ritz and Lido prices (with the lowest student concessions of any similar film-related event). We have once again set up a page via the Australian Cultural Fund to receive donations of any size, large or small. You can find it IF YOU CLICK ON THIS LINK

More news soon…

CINEMA REBORN - March Newsletter #1 - Program Release dates - Charitable Donations - New Publications - RED MATILDAS Restoration

 Hello Everyone

Just an early note to let you know that the full Cinema Reborn program will be released on 15 March. On that day you can drop in to the Ritz or Lido and pick up a copy of our splendid brochure listing all the films, session times and presenters. You will be able to log on to our website for all the information and links to bookings. We’ll be sending out another email closer to the date but if you would like to receive our brochure emailed to you as a downloadable Pdf document then you can order it in advance by emailing cinemareborn2025@gmail.com and just put “Receive Brochure” in the subject line.

In the meantime we have announced seven programs and you can read short notes and make a booking if you go to the Ritz Cinemas or the Lido Cinemas pages. On those pages you will find a link to purchase a 5 film ($80) or 10 film ($140) pass that will allow you to purchase a single ticket to any of our programs including our opening, closing and Saturday centrepiece sessions.

Charitable Donations

Cinema Reborn is grateful for the financial support of our donors. If your donation is received before 9 March you will be listed in the 2026 printed catalogue. Donations received after that date will be listed in 2027. Donations are used pay the screening fees to the archives and producers who supply our films and to keep our admission charges to regular Ritz and Lido prices (with the lowest student concessions of any similar film-related event).

We have once again set up a page via the Australian Cultural Fund to receive donations of any size, large or small. You can find it IF YOU CLICK ON THIS LINK

Justin “Jisoe” Hughes holding a photo of one of his galves

‘Katies’ — the new magazine publication of KinoTopia set to launch at ACMI

Fellow Cinema Reborn Organising Committee Member Digby Houghton has organised — with the help of KinoTopia — a screening of Eddie Martin’s 2005 documentary Jisoe at ACMI on March 24 to coincide with the publication of KinoTopia’s new print magazine Katies. More information and tickets available here.

KinoTopia is a weekly newsletter based in Melbourne and founded in 2023 as a means to promote underground and repertory screenings in the city and its surroundings. More information and how to subscribe can be found here.

A New Book by Cinema Reborn Supporter and Presenter Ivan Cerecina

We are pleased to announce the publication of Assembly Lines: Montage in Postwar French Film, written by one of our Cinema Reborn presenters, Ivan Cerecina (The University of Sydney / Ivan’s website ). The book examines the re-emergence of montage as an aesthetic figure and historiographical principle post-1945, via a study of the early films of three important filmmakers of that postwar generation: Nicole Vedrès, Alain Resnais, and Chris Marker. It is published by the prestigious University of Minnesota Press.

The book is available for pre-order in Australia until the end of February for the reduced price of $40 AUD, via The Nile Bookstore

Readers outside of Australia on your list, but they can purchase the book via the University of Minnesota Press’s website

Red Matildas – A Restoration Project of a Major Australian Documentary

Trevor Graham writes: In the picture is some significant Australian film history: Mandy Walker (DOP now 48th President of the American Society of Cinematographers, DOP on Elvis, Return Home, Mulan, Snow White, Jane Got a Gun, amongst many others) and Laurie McInnes (Broken Highway, Palisades, On Guard amongst many others) shooting Red Matildas, in Fitzroy (Melbourne) 1984.

FRIENDS OF HISTORY, AUSTRALIAN CINEMA & DOCUMENTARY – WE NEED YOUR HELP.

RED MATILDAS returns to screens big and small in a stunning 4K digital restoration, forty years after its original 16mm national cinema release across Australia. This award-winning 1985 documentary, to be preserved for streaming, community and educational audiences, captures the spirit of three remarkable women who challenged inequality and militarism during one of the most turbulent periods in modern history.

Through the stories of May Pennefather, Joan Goodwin and Audrey Blake, Red Matildas explores Australia during the Great Depression: a time of mass unemployment, hunger, and the rise of fascism at home and abroad. It was a period that stirred many into political action, and these women placed themselves at the front lines of global struggles for peace and justice.

Red Matildas is more than a historical record. It is a powerful reminder of the enduring struggles for peace, justice and women’s rights, and of the courage it takes to stand against war, poverty and inequality. Resonating deeply with today’s world of social upheaval, economic hardship and conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, the film invites new generations to rediscover the passion and conviction of women who refused to remain silent.

Already 50% of the $25,000 needed to restore the film has been raised. Those interested in donating to support the restoration of this award winning and irreplaceable film can learn more here:

Tax Deductible Donations through Documentary Australia

We hope you can support the ongoing life of this significant Australian documentary.

We look forward to seeing you at Cinema Reborn 2026.

At the French Film Film Festival - Tom Ryan reviews the 'Quietly compelling, exquisitely gentle, ...perfectly judged' - OUT OF LOVE (Nathan Ambrosioni, 2025)

Unexpected events can change people’s lives. For Jeanne (Camille Cottin) in Nathan Ambrosioni’s superb Out of Love – the original title, Les enfants vont bien literally translates as “The Children are Alright” – it’s the arrival on her suburban Paris doorstep of her sister Suzanne (Juliette Armanet) with her nine-year-old son, Gaspard (Manoã Varvat), and his little sister, Margaux (Nina Birman). 

Anybody who’s ever found themselves fortunate enough to take on parenting obligations will recognise Jeanne’s sense of panic when Suzanne disappears overnight, leaving her children behind. Jeanne is single and child-free by choice. Both sisters’ lives have been scarred by loss and each is, in her own way, still grieving about it. 

Beautifully shot by Victor Sequin and tenderly enfolded by Alexandre de La Baume’s unobtrusive score, the 26-year-old Ambrosioni’s emotionally potent family drama transforms Jeanne’s uneasy attempts to adjust to the changes thrust upon her into a journey of self-discovery. At the same time, it empathetically evokes the children’s confusion at what’s happened to them and the frightening fear of forever-abandonment that has fuelled so many fairytales over the years and has now found them cast adrift in the world. 

For Jeanne, the crisis becomes both personal and professional. Nicole (Monia Chokri), her former partner, shows her by example that it’s possible to deal with the needs of the children she’s been forced to take under her wing. And so, juggling her work as an insurance claims assessor with the demands of mothering these two lost souls, as well as with trying to make sense of her sister’s disappearance, Jeanne gradually comes to recognise parts of herself that she never knew were there.

Out of Love’s visual style tells us about the sisters’ lives even before we’re properly introduced to either of them. The restlessness of the opening scenes – as Suzanne drives the children to Jeanne’s – is in sharp contrast to the orderliness that characterises the initial sequences in Jeanne’s home. But then, as Jeanne comes face-to-face with her unexpected event, the stillness with which she had surrounded herself is not only disrupted but comes to seem like it’s been a prison all along. Nothing in the film is simple, every scene charged with a sense that things could change again in an instant. 

Ambrosioni’s approach throughout is measured and compassionate, rigorously drained of melodrama and neatly balancing Jeanne’s needs against the children’s confusion and distress. And the film’s glorious final sequence offers no easy solutions for any of the characters, setting imagery evoking lost childhoods against Gaspard and Margaux’s essential decency and resilience and guiding us towards an appreciation of how Jeanne’s commitments speak of a well-earned sense of renewal.

Quietly compelling, exquisitely gentle, delicately nuanced and graced by superb performances all round, this is a perfectly judged film.