WEA Film Study Group

The WEA Sydney Film Society is a non-profit film society based in Sydney, Australia. It is a club of WEA Sydney, which is part of the Workers' Educational Association .

It was established as WEA Film Study Group in 1961. The society had its first meeting on 23 February 1961. Ken Quinnell was present at the first meeting. The first president was Ian Klava, Pat Roos was the first secretary. Sid Gore was on the first committee.

As well as being a founder of the WEA Film Study Group, Ian Klava had memberships of a number of film societies including Sydney University Film Group, Sydney Film Society, the All Nations Club Film Group, the Sydney Cinema Society, and the Catholic Film Society. He also worked for the Department of Information film Unit and was Director of Sydney Film Festival from 1962 to 1965.

In the first twelve months of its operation the WEA Film Study Group had presented such films as "Kameradschaft", "The Sentimental Bloke", "Animal Farm", "The Last Laugh", "The Titan" and "Berlin Olympic Games".

The society held some film weekends, both residential at Newport and non-residential film weekends. These included an Eisenstein Weekend held in October, 1963 with one of the speakers being filmmaker Gil Brealey. Another residential film weekend was "Men with guns: an examination of gangster and western films", held at Newport, on 26–28 February 1965 with speakers, Ian McPherson and John Flaus. On the Anzac Day Weekend in 1966, the society held a film weekend at Newport with the theme: "Myth and Reality".

On 3 and 4 December 1966, the society held a non-residential film weekend on D. W. Griffith, with such features as Way Down East (1920), Orphans of The Storm (1922), and Isn't Life Wonderful (1924) being shown. John Morris, film director at the Australian Commonwealth Film Unit gave a lecture at the film weekend.

...
Wikipedia