While Queensland Film Festival is only in its second year, 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Brisbane-based film festival. An initiative of film society the Brisbane Cinema Group, the Brisbane Film Festival was held for the first time at New Farm’s Astor Theatre — now New Farm Cinemas — in May 1966.

To celebrate this important milestone in Queensland film culture, festival co-director Dr Huw Walmsley-Evans and QUT-based film festivals scholar Dr Tess Van Hemert will present a talk on the early years of BFF. Archival records and testimony from key players will offer a sense of the shape and tone of the festival and place BFF in the context of the local, national, and international film culture of its day.

This free session will conclude with a screening of several international and local short films that screened in the first Brisbane Film Festival program: Double Portrait (Kovásznai), Red and Black (Giersz), Syrinx (Larkin),Robert Klippel – Metal Construction, 1960 (Cantrill) Robert Klippel – Junk Sculpture, 1964(Cantrill). Courtesy of the NFSA and the Cantrills.

This is a free event. RSVP by emailing [email protected].