History
Sydney’s listed screen gem The Chauvel has been operating in the historic Paddington Town Hall from 1977. Formerly the Paddington Town Hall ballroom (the fully sprung floor remains under the seats) our Cinema One auditoria boasts a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The cinema has long been the spiritual home of Australian film culture, a gathering place for true film lovers to share their passion for the best of independent cinema.
Previously, an Australian Film Institute (AFI) cinema from the 1980s, it was named after Charles Chauvel**, a pioneering Australian filmmaker from the mid 1920’s onwards, best remembered for Forty Thousand Horsemen (1941) and Jedda (1955). Plans to have a cinema installed were initiated in the early 1970s by the Paddington Town Hall Centre, a group that attracted funding to renovate the whole building from the then Film, Radio and Television Board of the Australia Council. It was named the Ozone. Then, in 1978 the Paddington Town Hall Cinema became for a short period the home of the National Film Theatre (NFT) and a hub for Cinémathèque goers. A term that originated in France and is essentially a cinema attached to a film library, or a film archive. In 1995 the cinema complex and foyer was renovated and a second screen was added.
At the time of late September 2006, when The Chauvel closed its doors, Lord Mayor Clover Moore received around 100 letters about the cinema, the most she had received on any arts related subject since her succession. These letters came from residents and non-residents; people involved in the film industry and people who were keen cinema-goers. They pointed to the Chauvel's important role in screening new Australian films - that would otherwise not be seen at the large multiplexes or would be diminished on TV. Palace Cinemas was selected as the new lesee thereby safeguarding The Chauvel as a unique film centre. On July 27th 2006 The Chauvel re-opened its doors.
Today, The Chauvel seeks to be a vibrant, professionally managed, specialist art-house cinema that is dedicated to offering distinct and alternative viewing experiences to the mainstream, and more importantly, fostering film culture in Sydney. Through the exhibition of diverse films, exclusive releases, Film Festivals, Cinémathèque, Australiana, International touring programs and Special Events, as well as having high quality projection facilities, dedicated & passionate staff and a welcoming atmosphere, The Chauvel aims to become the premiere film hub in Sydney and a fixture in the cultural landscape of the city. Our patron Rose Byrne is “very proud to be a patron of the new revitalized Chauvel Cinema and to have the opportunity to lend my support to this great project. The Chauvel Cinema is an important part of Sydney’s cinematic heritage having supported the early work of some of Australia’s most high profile filmmakers.”
**BIOGRAPHY CHARLES CHAUVEL:
Charles was born in 1897 in Warwick, Queensland, the second in a family of five children. Soon after, the family moved to the Fassifern Valley, S.E. Qld., and established a dairying property, ‘Summerlands’. Charles grew up with a love of mountains and horses and an interest in Art. At seventeen, after jackerooing and droving on the Barcoo, he managed the family property while his father, Alan Chauvel, was on active service.
Charles’ uncle, Harry Chauvel, became the first Australian General and led the Light Horse in the Palestine campaign in W.W.1. Uncle Harry’s letters home stirred Charles’ imagination and later provided the subject matter for his 1940’s film, Forty Thousand Horsemen. When his father, Alan Chauvel, returned from the war, Charles went to Sydney to study Art. He met the sporting idol of the time, Snowy Baker, who was also making Australian silent westerns (Carroll Baker Productions). Charles was fascinated by the new medium of ‘moving pictures’ and asked Snowy for a job. The only job available was that of horse handler. Charles accepted. He took care of the horses, drove the Cobb & Co. coach for location shooting and gradually took small parts in movies such as The Jackeroo of Coolabong and The Man from Lightning Ridge.
Two to three years later Charles went by ship to California, to study film-making in the Hollywood studios. He took odd jobs to make ends meet, played bit parts in the silent comedies and did publicity work for Douglas Fairbanks Snr. He returned to Australia in 1923, to make his first film. Chauvel’s first two features, Moth of Moonbi and Greenhide, were typical Australian westerns, set in south-east Qld. The star of Greenhide was a young Australian actress, Elsie Sylvaney, who had grown up in South Africa. At the end of the film she and Charles were engaged, and married in 1927. Their partnership was also a working one, as Elsie took charge of make-up (for the early films), script and continuity work and on-the-spot rehearsing of actors.
The thirty-year partnership of Charles and Elsa Chauvel (she changed her Christian name to Elsa) spanned a period of tremendous change in cinema entertainment, from silent movies and advent of sound to colour film and eventually television documentary. Their first sound film, In the Wake of the Bounty, gave Errol Flynn his debut role, as Fletcher Christian of the Bounty. Probably their most famous films were Forty Thousand Horsemen and Jedda, Australia’s first feature film in colour. Their last project was Australian Walkabout, a series of outback documentaries for BBC television. Charles was planning to follow it with a south-sea island walkabout series when he died of a sudden heart attack, in 1959. Elsa did much to see that his films were preserved, with the help and collaboration of the National Film & Sound Archive. Charles Chauvel was a man with enormous drive and enthusiasm, and believed that the only way to give an Australian film international appeal was to make it totally Australian.
© Susanne Chauvel Carlsson