Published Tuesday 19 May
Spend a warm winter day at the NFSA and take a cinematic journey through time and space. From mind-bending time travel and fractured narratives to intergalactic adventures, alien encounters and cosmic odysseys, the Winter Film Series at Arc Cinema has stories stretching across eras and into the far reaches of the universe. Whether you’re drawn to contemplative tales or epic escapism, you can explore worlds reshaped by technology, desire and chance.
Find your community at the NFSA with Queer Flicks, a new film series offering pre-screening time to connect and unwind. Launching with a screening of Lesbian Space Princess, the inaugural event features a post-screening Q&A with director Leela Varghese. The series continues on the first Thursday of every month, bringing together a vibrant program of LGBTQIA+ screen favourites in a welcoming environment. Season highlights include a documentary exploring New York’s ballroom scene in Paris is Burning (35mm), where queer and trans performers celebrate identity, chosen family, and spectacular self-expression.
Enjoy unhurried, immersive movie marathons for chilly days this winter. We’re pairing iconic trilogies with comfort food and drinks, including mulled wine and hot chocolate from our onsite bar and deli, Dom’s. The Back to the Future trilogy kicks things off with a wildly inventive time-travel adventure. Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending trio follows, beginning with Memento, a psychological thriller told in reverse, followed by Inception, a layered sci-fi heist with dreams within dreams, and concluding with Interstellar, a sweeping science fiction epic exploring space, time and love at the edges of human survival. End the marathon season with the nail-biting thrill of the Alien trilogy.
Warm up your wintery weekends with Friday night double features, offering ticket discounts and curated pairings of iconic cinema for late-night movie dates. Romantic connection unfolds across a single night in Before Sunrise and reconnects nine years later in Before Sunset. High-intensity contrasts follow in Run Lola Run and Funny Games, where every minute counts. Retro sci-fi meets cult spectacle with Barbarella and Planet of the Apes, before French visions of time, memory and emotion unfold in The Time Masters and Je t'aime, je t'aime. The series concludes with the Jim Jarmusch double feature of Mystery Train and Night on Earth.
More than a movie, the Winter Film Season is a choose-your-own experience: audiences can sit back and relax or connect and learn through post-screening Q&As with academics, directors and film experts. Season highlights include NAIDOC Week at the NFSA with The Colleano Heart, tracing Aboriginal boxer and showman Peter Colleano’s family legacy, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker and NFSA Head of First Nations Engagement Pauline Clague; and My Life Without Steve with director Gillian Leahy, a reflection on friendship and absence. Celebrate 40 years of the iconic Australian film Dogs in Space, followed by a Q&A with director Richard Lowenstein.
During National Science Week in August, join radio astronomer Mark Price for a special post-screening discussion of The Dish, set during the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. One of the few people who was there at the Parkes radio telescope as humanity first stepped onto the Moon, Professor Price will share firsthand reflections on the historic moment, what the film gets right and what really happened behind the scenes.
The Science. Art. Film. series invites audiences to bring their curiosity and explore the strange, playful edges of science and creativity this winter. With post-screening talks featuring ANU scholars, researchers and artists, every session ignites new ways of thinking. Moderated by Dr Anna-Sophie Jürgens, whose work spans science in popular culture, humour and the histories of mad science, this season opens with Steven Spielberg’s iconic story of extraterrestrial contact in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, followed by dreams, art and mind-bending theft in Ruben Brandt, Collector.
In partnership with 666AM ABC Radio Canberra, Book Club at NFSA is the perfect winter ritual. Read the book, watch the film, then talk it through in a monthly series that explores how beloved books are reimagined for film. Each screening is followed by relaxed conversations led by ABC Radio Canberra’s Alice Matthews and author Rhiân Williams. The winter program spans classic and contemporary titles, from Markus Zusak’s international bestseller The Book Thief in June, to the cult desert lesbian-romance Desert Hearts in July, and S. E. Hinton’s coming-of-age classic The Outsiders in August.
‘Our Winter program emerged from conversations about how audiences experience time today - fragmented and accelerated - and by cinema’s unique ability to bend time and space in ways no other artform can,’ said Alice Taylor, the NFSA’s Creative Producer. ‘We hope audiences leave our beautiful Arc Cinema inspired to reimagine their time and place in the world.’
📅 Winter Film Series program (digital)
📷 Download images via Dropbox.
Media enquiries and interview requests:
Irina Agaronyan | Communications Specialist
0439 382 064 | Irina.Agaronyan@nfsa.gov.au
| Winter Highlights | |
|---|---|
| Movie Marathons | Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990). Memento (2000), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014). Alien (1979), Aliens (1986), Alien³ (1992) |
| Queer Flicks | Lesbian Space Princess (2025) + Q&A with director Leela Varghese. Paris is Burning in 35mm (1990) |
| Science. Art. Film. | Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) + panel discussion with ANU researchers, academics and artists. Ruben Brandt, Collector (2018) + panel discussion with ANU researchers, academics and artists. |
| National Science Week | The Dish (2000) + radio astronomer Mark Price shares firsthand reflections from his time at the Parkes radio telescope during the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. Find out what really happened behind the scenes. |
| Book Club at NFSA | The Book Thief (2013), Desert Hearts (1985), The Outsiders: The Complete Novel (1983) |
| Cult Classics with Venus Mantrap | Blood Simple – Director’s Cut (1984), Scanners (1981), Body Double (1984) |
| A Day at the Movies | The NFSA’s dementia-friendly film program welcomes Billy Wilder’s sparkling comedy Some Like It Hot (1959) on 35mm. Designed to foster connection and comfort for people living with dementia alongside carers, friends and family. |
