CINEMA REBORN - June Newsletter - Dates for 2026 plus lots of restoration and screening news.

The Hawthorn Lido and Lido Cinema One Cinema Reborn Dates for 2026 in Sydney and Melbourne For the last two years Cinema Reborn has expanded its program in Sydney to cover a full week of screenings from Wednesday to Tuesday.  (Thursday to Tuesday in Melbourne.) In 2025 on the final two days we presented several films in each city that were having their first and only screening in the season.  After some consideration and in consultation with our screening partners at the Randwick Ritz and Hawthorn Lido we have decided to rejig our screening format. In 2026 in each city we will open on a Friday evening and conclude our season on the next Sunday. In Sydney the season will run from Friday 1 May to Sunday 10 May and in Melbourne from Friday 8 May to Sunday 17 May. We expect over that time to screen between 20-22 films in each city, depending on the running times of each of the films chosen. There will be repeat screenings of some of the films on weekdays in Sydney from Monday 4 May to Friday 8 May and in Melbourne from Monday 7 May to Friday 11 May.  MAKE A DIARY ENTRY NOW! New Organising Committee Member Zac Tomé Cinema Reborn welcomes our newest member of the Organising Committee and a boost to our presence and activity in Melbourne. Zac Tomé (above)is a filmmaker, film writer, photographer, and aspiring academic living in Melbourne/Naarm. His filmmaking is interested in the intersection between the histories of place and how that reveals itself in contemporary everyday-lived experience. He is a recent graduate of the Film Masters program at the University of Amsterdam where he wrote a thesis on contemporary independent Australian film. During our recent season in Melbourne Zac volunteered on our Information Desk, provided editorial assistance on the Cinema Reborn catalogue and  introduced My Darling Clementine at its main Melbourne screening.  Restoring the classic Australian documentary WOOLLOOMOOLOO. Film-maker Pat Fiske has embarked on the task of restoring her 1978 documentary. She writes: In 1973, Denise White, Peter Gailey and I were struck by the potential life changing impact of the actions of the various community groups, the NSWBLF and their Green Bans were doing. We began work on our first 16mm feature film. The section about Woolloomooloo and Victoria Street was originally intended to be about 10 minutes in the completed film about the history of the BLF and the Green Bans. When we came to the editing, we had such a bounty of footage our planned 10 minutes had turned into a two hour rough cut. So, we decided to make a film about Woolloomooloo first. When Woolloomooloo was finally completed in 1978, I went back to tell the broader BLF and Green Bans story, creating the film, Rocking the Foundations (1985), which has since been beautifully restored by the National Film and Sound Archive. Sadly, the NFSA can only restore a few films each year.  We have commenced a Fundraiser to RESTORE our 16mm film Woolloomooloo to a very high quality digital product.Donations to this Project are 100% Tax Deductible through Documentary Australia  CLICK HERE REMEMBER BELSEN - Q&A screening of a new documentary by Frank Shields. Frank Shields has been making films since the early 1970s. His documentary on Breaker Morant (1974) won numerous awards and his 1986 film The Surfer  was selected as an official entry in the Cannes Film Festival. To mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Frank invites you to join him on 25th June for a powerful evening at Randwick Ritz Cinemas for a screening of his latest film, a thought-provoking documentary Remember Belsen. For details of the film and to make a booking CLICK HERE THE PLEASURES OF THE BIG SCREEN  A link to a piece in The Guardian by Caitlin Cassidy which gives much comfort to those of us who still love seeing movies, new and old, on the big screen.   CINEMA REBORN ON FACEBOOK Our Facebook page has posts throughout the year with details of classic screenings, film events and restoration news and other activity of interest to cinephiles. Become a Follower and you will be first with the latest. Just click here

REMEMBER BELSEN + Q&A with director FRANK SHIELDS - Randwick Ritz Cinemas 25 June

Editor's Note: Frank Shields has been making films since the early 1970s. His documentary on Breaker Morant (1974) won numerous awards and his 1986 film The Surfer  was selected as an official entry in the Cannes Film Festival.

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To mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Frank Shields invites you join him on 25th June for a powerful evening at Ritz Cinemas screening the thought-provoking documentary, REMEMBER BELSEN. The film includes footage locked away for 40 years, deemed too shocking for public release by British and American authorities. 

 TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK HERE:

VIEW TRAILER

REMEMBER BELSEN (2025, 105 minutes) is an eyewitness documentary, featuring interviews with five Jewish survivors, a cameraman who recorded the camp’s liberation, and Australian war artist Alan Moore, the first to record the horrors of the BERGEN-BELSEN camp.

British liberators entering the camp on April 15, 1945 found thousands of unburied corpses. Too ill to recover, 13,000 inmates died after liberation, with the official end of the war in Europe only weeks away. Reeling from the first images of Nazi concentrations camps, the world was shocked beyond belief by the horrors of Bergen-Belsen.

Around 50,000 persons died there, including diarist Anne Frank and her sister Margot. Most of the victims were Jews. The unimaginable intentional horror and the extraordinary British rescue operation were international headlines and Bergen-Belsen became a byword for evil.

Frank Shield’s film reflects on the experiences of camp inmates to convey the full horror of the Holocaust. In a moving counterpoint, the film records a reunion between two Jewish survivors, Olga Horak and Helen Schon and war artist, Alan Moore.