Braidwood Film Club History

Braidwood has a long and chequered history of cinema screening. Our heritage-listed building was host to 35mm films as early as November 1924 when the premises was a roller skating venue named Rink Hall. By February 1925 the building was advertised as the National Theatre and, although it has become a council-owned community hall, that name persists. By late 1925, Electric Pictures were conducting regular screenings here. Then, resourceful local entrepreneur Paul Nomchong leased the building installing lighting and sound equipment himself. It is probable that he showed the very first sound movie to be screened in the National Theatre in 1930. After 1956 everything goes quiet: Cecil Byrne ran irregular screenings in the Theatre between 1964 and 1967, and between 1981 and 1990 Barry Waters ran 16mm films but located in the Braidwood Central School.

A brief renaissance occurred after the Theatre was bought by the Tallaganda Shire Council in 1976. The Film Group (part of a council 355 committee) resumed public screenings in 1994 under the guiding hand of Harry Cassilles but soon became unviable. By 2000 film societies were in the ascendant and the distribution environment kinder to non-profit societies. Much of the early cinema history in the town is colourfully described in the pamphlet Braidwood goes to the Movies.

The Braidwood Film Club was started in 2002 not long after the preservation of the building was ensured by the actions of a local group of volunteers. It was incorporated as a non-profit association in June 2008. Initially we ran fortnightly screenings of 16mm films sourced from the National Film and Sound Archive which had recovered the collection holdings from ACMI and we occasionally still draw on those amazing resources. In the last few years we have settled on monthly Saturday evening screenings with a convivial shared meal ("pot-luck dinner") ahead of the film. Recently this shared meal was temporarily suspended owing to Covid-19 precautions but we hope to reinstate it soon.

We have a 4.6m x 2.6m motorized projection screen, a Sony™ VPL-PHZ11 video projector and two Hanimex™ Eiki 16mm projectors with a changeover system.

We try to program a range of quality films – classics, Australian films, recent releases, films from the film festivals and documentaries... why not take a look at our past programmes.

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Braidwood goes to the Movies
Australian Cinema and Theatre Society 1997
Robert James Parkinson & Christine Wright
ISBN 0646319949 National Library Bib ID 1678039
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