Article
published in the Sunday Herald Sun, 16 April 2000
A
film buff has turned the back room of a North Fitzroy
pub into the most amazing picture theatre in town,
reports
MICHAEL WARD
Splodge! film night is a million miles from your
local suburban multiplex experience. And therein lies
its charm. Splodge! is run out of the back room of
a North Fitzroy pub. It is an eclectic, eccentric film
society with a decidedly oddball bent. Best of all,
it is free*. At Splodge!, the first and third Monday
of every month at the Empress Hotel, you will find
no box office (there are no tickets to buy), no usher
to show you your seat (just grab your own table), and
no overpriced popcorn (although you will find Thai
burgers, chickpea curries and nachos on the menu).
You
will find a program with cartoons, short films, rare
prints of schlocky sci-fi pictures and episodes from
'60s television shows. A recent Splodge! screening
included the Disney animated film The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow; Mongrel's Funeral, an Australian short that
won an award at the 2987 Melbourne Film Festival; and
episodes from TV series The Twilight Zone and Thriller.
Film
buff Alan Quirk has been running his free screenings
at the Empress since November 1997, taking over from
a regular, if unsuccessful, stand-up comedy and poetry-reading
night. A Rusden Media Studies graduate - "a long, long
time ago" -
Quirk also studied film under Melbourne film buff John
Flaus and has long been a devotee of Melbourne Cinematheque.
He
funds Splodge! from his own pocket.
"This is culture," he says, "you simply cannot put a price tag on every single
cultural event. That's the expectation these days.
Everyone is running on a philosophy of user pays. I strongly feel you cannot
have a healthy culture without making certain cultural items freely available."
Quirk
calls Splodge! a free, no-budget, guerilla, community film education project.
In some ways, he likens his role to that of the old picture show man, who travelled
from town to remote town to screen films for the locals. While North Fitzroy
is hardly the Back o' Bourke, Quirk approaches his work with an almost missionary
zeal. "You show these films and it creates an appetite," he says.
"If the films are as striking as I think they are, they will stay with people
for the rest of their lives.
"I really feel that doing something like this can affect and influence lives."
Quirk recalls how at a recent screening a woman came up to him afterwards and
thanked him for showing the Twilight Zone episode Incident At Owl Creek Bridge.
The woman had read Ambrose Bierce's famous short story and had waited more than
30 years to see the film version. "You just get an enormous feeling of warmth
in the heart when you realise you're completing something for somebody," says
Quirk.
"I mean, that film is a classic, but who sees it and where? It's extraordinary."
Quirk screens his films on a pair of 16mm projectors mounted on the pub's pool
table. He speaks lovingly of his "glorious 16mm".
"It's almost obsolete technology," Quirk says. "But it's a tactile experience.
Even if the film's terrible, you can still sit up front and look at the emulsion
or grain or heat swirls from the lamp as they fall on the screen."
On a typical
Splodge! night, 30 - 70 people can cram into the back room of the pub. A rarely
seen 30-minute documentary on Woody Allen recently packed in the punters. And
the very first episode of Sesame Street proved extremely popular. As Melbourne's
best kept film secret becomes well spread, Quirk may find himself faced with
the need to expand - something he is not so sure about.
"It's a big job and I love it," he says. "Of course, I'd love to see Splodge!
grow. But I'm also tremendously loyal. The pub's been extremely good to us, and
in my mind it would be unethical or immoral to run off after having achieved
all we've achieved.
In a way, it's like a cosy marriage."
*for the first 2 visits, after which a very reasonable membership fee applies.
