The Film Society at a 100

Synopsis

Celebrate the Centenary of The Film Society!

Emerging from the ‘Cambridge University Kinema Club’ but founded in London by a group of artists and writers, the Film Society was attended by such luminaries as Virginia Woolf and Alfred Hitchcock and played a central role in establishing film as an art-form.

It introduced films from abroad that the censors banned and that no commercial distributor would handle, hosted the premieres of such films as Nosferatu (1922) and Battleship Potemkin (1925), and it inspired scores of similar societies across the country. 

Join experts Inga Fraser (University of Cambridge) and Henry K. Miller (Anglia Ruskin University) for an introduction to and celebration of the Film Society, including special screenings, one hundred years to the minute after its first programme in October 1925.

Films screened as part of the event include:

Tusalava (1929) [sound version]. Courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation. Music soundtrack “Rhythmic Dance for two pianos” by Eugene Goossens. Digital version from material preserved and made available by Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Entr’acte (René Clair) © 1924 - Fondation Jérôme Seydoux Pathé - Succession René Clair
Restoration credit : 4K restoration in 2019 at the Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna, with the support of the CNC. Based on the Pathé image negative and an  original print from the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana (Milan).