Dendy Cinemas is currently hosting a curious program of films. Rather than delivering your typical mainstream, widely-appealing screenings, Dendy Presents Journeys: Cinematic Odysseys focuses on lesser-known and rarer films that can’t be seen anywhere else in Australia – not through physical media, on TV, or on streaming.
As the team says, this program for the Dendy Newtown cinema comprises ‘rare cinematic odysseys that set out to tell their stories without compromise’. That includes seven-hour-long war epics, passion projects created over a number of years and works from auteurs ‘at the peak of their careers putting reputations on the line’.
Andrew Perkin is Dendy Cinemas’ Senior Content Strategist. ‘This is probably the most ambitious program I’ve done,’ he says.
‘It’s the culmination of my experience as a programmer, and my experience as a festivalgoer and film lover. This is the program that I just always wanted to see. I wanted … to put it out there and really challenge [the Dendy] audience to come and trust us, and trust that these are worthwhile cinematic experiences.’
Dendy Cinemas’ rare film program – quick links
War and Peace leads a strong class of rare film screenings at Dendy Cinemas
Dendy Presents Journeys: Cinematic Odysseys is headlined by the staggering seven-hour, 17-minute War and Peace adaptation directed by Sergei Bondarchuk. Originally released in four instalments, War and Peace will be screened in full on 17 October at Dendy Newton, with the session beginning at 12.30pm and ending at 8:02pm.
Also on the list of films is the director’s cut of 1900, a historical epic from Bernardo Bertolucci that charts the evolution of fascism and communism in Italy through the friendship of two childhood friends, played by Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu.
TV miniseries Fanny and Alexander will be shown in full, providing a window into the ‘delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family’ living through the changes of turn-of-the-20th-century Sweden. It’s well-regarded as director Ingmar Bergman’s most personal project, with autobiographical elements included.
Audiences will also be able to watch Taiwan New Wave classic A Brighter Summer Day, the complete uncut version of Wolfgang Petersen’s second world war film Das Boot and the seven-hour, 34-minute-long Sátántangó, a slow film about an agricultural collective living in a post-apocalyptic world after the fall of communism.
Each of the films in the program have been carefully selected by Perkin, with a view to invite audiences to be challenged by unique, personal and ambitious films, including several working on an impressive scope.
‘We basically start with just the dream list,’ Perkin says of the program’s curation. ‘Our ideal list of all the ones we’ve always wanted. I had a list of about 30 films I’ve been tracking over the years, that I just had a dream to screen … we just basically chased all over the world.’
He adds, ‘Part of the reason why I wanted to do this is because they’re all films without compromise. They’re all ones that weren’t made from a commercial perspective. They were ones that usually had an artistic or cultural perspective … where they sit in the cultural milieu was very important for what we want to get across to audiences, that this is not escapism.
‘We see this as a cultural experience.’
The challenge of obtaining the rights to screen rare films
Perkin says the program required ample work to get off the ground. There were multiple negotiations required with rights holders, and approvals within Australia too.
‘This is one of those rare programs where we had to look international to get all the content,’ Perkin says. ‘Thankfully we got some really different titles across the line.’
He adds, ‘Each of these films really represents a different national culture. I wanted to give a broad spectrum of cultural epics on screen.
‘I was very careful to not play too many of the same nation’s films next to each other. I wanted to spread it out and give audiences a really great journey around the world with these films and what they mean for their respective cultures.’
To acquire the rights to screen each film, Perkin undertook negotiations with various international distributors and screen bodies.
Sátántangó required a ‘convincing’ proposition to screen, as it’s a film that’s ‘quite protected’ and ‘has a bit of rules around what [Dendy] can say and how [it] can promote it, because it’s very important to the nation [of Hungary] and to the filmmaker.
‘There was a bit of pitching in that we wanted it to be part of … the program, and I painted a broader picture of what we want to say with these films, and how we want to contextualise them.’
Regardless of the complexity of these discussions, Perkin describes a ‘really great response and excitement’ from the rights holders, because ‘they don’t get the chance to do this very often’.
‘For them, this is a really great opportunity to see their content on the big screen as well.’
Many of the films are also being screened in updated modern formats for the first time, giving viewers a chance to see them in the best possible quality. All are screening digitally, with most being in 4K or other restored formats.
‘There’s a lot of love and care that’s gone into these films and these screenings,’ Perkin says.
‘They’re the best versions of them, which is really exciting. Most of these films are at least 20 years old, if not older. They may have had a run where they just weren’t on screen, because there wasn’t the screening format and there wasn’t the versions available.
‘In the last 10 years, there’s been this real refocus on unearthing these amazing classics and restoring them. We’re very lucky in that pretty much all of the prints we have are restorations from the original prints – they’re all filmmaker approved, and they’re all the version that the filmmaker intended.’
With permissions acquired, the next step was approaching the Australian Classification Board, with all films requiring approval to screen, in line with requirements for other festivals and screen programs. As Perkin says, a history working on the Sydney Film Festival meant this process was relatively streamlined, although there was a lot of ‘backend admin’ to make sure everything was the way it needs to be for public screening.
Dendy’s journeys around the world
For Perkin, the complexity of curating the project is worth it. Through its run, he hopes Journeys will provide a space for film lovers to open their minds and learn more about the vast and wonderful world of global filmmaking, beyond the window offered in more mainstream film programs.
‘It’s a program titled Journeys for a very specific reason,’ he says.
‘The idea is that you come and you go on this incredibly encompassing journey on screen, and you come out feeling something different. All of these films are very emotionally-centred and they’re very culturally sensitive. What I’m just hoping is that our customers come out of this feeling a renewed sense of engagement with these cultures.
‘Really, for me, it’s the excitement that comes with going on this journey … these longer than traditional films, they sometimes feel a lot quicker than some of these [other] films because they’re such engaging journeys. I want [audiences] to just go in and get enthralled and come out invigorated.’
While Perkin acknowledges that asking audiences to sit for mammoth multi-hour sessions – some without breaks between, to preserve directorial vision – is asking a lot, he believes the reward provided by these cinematic odysseys is incentive enough.
‘The whole program has been a labour of love for the team.’
