Last weekend I went to a cinema to see a showing of Blonde Venus - the old flick where Marlene Dietrich starts one of her nightclub songs dressed as a gorilla, with Cary Grant in the audience. Marlene the gorilla has a chorus line of black dancers with big afros. She then does a gorilla-suit strip-tease, and dons a blonde afro wig to sing Hot Voodoo, one of her dodgier songs (singing it she sounds like a rather bad drag queen), but great entrance.
Before the main film, they also showed Jean Renoir's amusingly kooky silent short Charleston.
It was put on by this new thing called the 'Queensland Gallery of Modern Art Cinémathèque'.
They were showing a series of wild animal-themed flicks (King Kong, Island of Lost Souls, Creature from the Black Lagoon etc).
One of their future programs is a series of Andy Warhol films (including that one of the Empire State Building which goes on and on for 9 boring hours). And I say, why doesn't Sydney have a cinematheque at the moment! What are these bloody uncultured QLDers doing having one before us! I'm very annoyed. Sydney should get one, quick. But we should call it something else. Calling it a cinematheque would attract too many pimply art students wanting to talk about their latest video instalment projects (and there's enough of them around already!).
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