Italian film nights in 1950's -1970's Melbourne were an excuse for a multigenerational night out. Movie screenings brought places, faces and voices from the old country to a hungry audience. But they also helped save some of Melbourne’s favourite suburban cinemas from demolition.

In this series, Choc-tops and Cassata, part of The Secret Life of Language, hosts Elisabetta Ferrari (Italian Studies Program) and Mark Nicholls (Screen and Cultural Studies) are joined by comedian, writer and producer Santo Cilauro to dig into the ways Italian language films shaped the cultural life of Melbourne.

In this episode, we speak with Gus Berger, cinema owner-operator and producer of the documentary The Lost City of Melbourne. Gus explains how suburban cinemas fit into the big picture of Melbourne’s mid-20th-century urban redevelopment and demolition frenzy.

The trio discuss cheap rent and architectural marvels, including the Metropolitan Cinema’s space age ticket booth, and bemoan the gap in the photographic archive. We also discuss the impact of the introduction of Television in general, but especially the multicultural public tv network, SBS, launching on to our tv screens in 1979.

Choc-tops and Cassata is a mini-series of The Secret Life of Language, a podcast from the University of Melbourne’s School of Languages and Linguistics. The series was produced and edited by Elisabetta Ferrari, Alice Garner and Gavin Nebauer. Recorded and mixed by Gavin Nebauer at the Horwood Recording Studio, the University of Melbourne.

Choc-tops and Cassata is made with support from ACIS (Australasian Centre for Italian Studies)

If you have any stories or info about the Melbourne cinema scene as discussed in the podcast, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]

The Secret Life of Language is licensed under Creative Commons.