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AT THE

STATE FILM

CENTRE

By Ross King
In 1967 I joined the State Film
Centre as a Technician/Projectionist.
Long before colour television and
domestic video recorders, the SFC
provided a 16mm documentary film
loan service to community groups and
educational institutions. It employed a
couple of travelling showmen to take its
films to remote parts of the state, often
to places without reticulated electricity.
For these trips a generator mounted on
a trailer was towed along. under one roof and give it a state-of- Baker arc lamps were mounted on
the-art cinema seating around 230 Simplex five-point pedestals. My job
people. was to get this plant up and running.
We made a number of reconnaissance While it would have been up the job, it
visits to the site. The theatre was still a really wasn’t fitting to take it to a new
concrete bunker, but design problems showplace theatre.
were already evident. The worst early Thankfully, before this happened,
decision was to place the screen on the Treasury passed a special grant of
boundary wall, with no space for $12,000 for the purchase of new
speakers behind the screen. Sound equipment. An order was placed with
reproduction was less than ideal for Pyrox Ltd., the agents for Bauer, for
years. two Bauer B8A 35mm projectors and a
Another problem was the budget: no Bauer 16mm Selecton projector with
allowance had been made for new Xenon lamp.
equipment. In the dispersed SFC way, A month or so later Pyrox advised
public screenings were held at Nicholas that production of the model B8A had
The author at his desk at the SFC. Hall in Lonsdale Street. The 16mm ceased. Instead, Bauer would supply
The SFC was a motley collection of carbon arc Bauer Selecton 110 model B10 equipment for the same
buildings. It shared its headquarters at projector in use there was to come to cost. After another month we learned
110 Victoria Street, Carlton with the the new theatre. that the B10 equipment could not be
RMIT Refrigeration School and Radio In storage at Kelvin Place were supplied either, but a B14 projector, the
School. A little further along Victoria 35mm pre-Cinemascope projectors very last of the traditional Bauer
Street, at the north-east corner of from the Grand Footscray. Two machines to be manufactured in
Cardigan Street, the Education Simplex front-shutter projector heads Germany, would be despatched
Department housed their film library, on RCA sound heads with Hamilton immediately.
the Audio Visual Education Centre) in a
group of dilapidated terrace houses.
Another CATHS member Ross
Campbell, worked there.
The SFC at Victoria Street
comprised administration, film
vaults/library, inspection, despatch, a
reference library, printery and a staff
room for 28 persons. Sometimes
ammonia vapour escaping from the
Refrigeration School permeated the
centre, leaving everyone gasping.
The technical workshop, garage and
store were in Kelvin Place, off Cardigan
Street, in a former home for old seamen.
Construction was underway for new
State Public Offices at Treasury Place.
This building was to consolidate SFC

8 2007 CINEMARECORD