Friday night I went to the Sydney Film Festival (where we might reasonably expect best condition screening would be a priority) and saw the Japanese film “Season of the Sun” run in the wrong format - every body’s head was cut off the top of the frame. The projectionist, the “venue manager”, the theater manager and Dendy’s manager all claimed it wasn’t their problem. The festival has not replied.
This occurrence, which is far from unique, is not just a matter of a couple of hundred people having the only showing of a rare archival title, brought half way round the world at considerable experience, ruined.
If the audience for opera, gallery art, live theater or the rest were treated in this way, the organizers would be engulfed in a swarm of blue rinsed fury. Pop fans would turn into a lynch mob. Local film goers take it because they haven’t experienced better. Sydney now hasn’t had a genuine cinematheque for the thirty plus years since the National Film Theater was closed out. See the result!
