INTRODUCTION

1. The Cinephobia–Cinephilia Dialectic

2. The Forgotten Foundation: Film Societies as Educators

3. The Amateur Science Connection

4. The Feedback Loop Ideal

5. Three Phases — Not an Evolution, but a Sequence of Coexisting Paradigms

Further reading

CONCLUSION

Introduction

As I mentioned in an earlier article, one of the goals of ACOFS is to build the world’s biggest and most thorough searchable archive of Film Society history. Not just for Australia, but worldwide.

To this end, I am forever wading through the literature and research — and acquiring academic texts – as if there’s no tomorrow.

Very well then, today let’s go to Germany and Austria. It’s the early 20^th Century, shortly before WWI.

From my disorderly notes, let me share with you a few interesting insights & discoveries I’ve come across that will be useful to the Film Society Movement of today … and tomorrow.

Before the rise of interest in “Arthouse” films, the earliest film societies were focused on promoting science and education.

I was speaking with the lovely Alison Bainbridge, Secretary of Grampians Film Society the other day. She happened to be in Queensland attending a conference of the Crochet Guild of Australia. Yes, crochet. No, I’m not a member. A quick review of the history of crochet does not reveal any period during which there existed “crochetphobia” – an intense fear of the potentially harmful moral or mental health effects of crocheting.

In sharp contrast to this, in every Western country I’ve studied, the formation of film societies was driven by a powerful and motivational, intertwined thread of “cinephobia” and “cinephilia”.

Apparently, film has the power to enlighten us and film has the power to dumb us down. This is just as true of supposedly sophisticated – and often nihilistic — Arthouse films as it is of kooky slapstick.

Crocheting, not so much.

Something to think about … or not.

1. The Cinephobia–Cinephilia Dialectic

It’s difficult today to imagine cinema as a force so new, so untested, and so potentially destabilising that entire associations were formed to protect society from it. Yet, in the early decades of the 20th century, especially in Germany and Austria, this was precisely the situation. The emergence of film provoked not only awe and enthusiasm, but deep concern — even alarm. It’s from this tension that the earliest film societies arose, shaped by what we might call the cinephobia–cinephilia dialectic.

This dialectic — the co-existence of fear and love of film — is not simply an historical curiosity. It was a generative contradiction. The cinephobes, typically drawn from public health, religious, and educational sectors, worried about film’s supposed power to bypass critical faculties and seduce the public into passivity, moral decay, or mindless sensationalism. They lobbied for censorship, regulation, and reform. They saw cinema not as a neutral tool, but as a dangerous influence.

But from within this same moral landscape emerged a different response — the proto-cinephiles. These were not naïve enthusiasts who denied the power of film; rather, they affirmed that power while insisting it could be directed toward uplift, not decay. They didn’t reject the cinephobes’ analysis of cinema’s influence; they simply disagreed with the solution. Instead of suppressing cinema, they sought to redeem it.

It’s no accident that so many early film societies began with names that included terms like reform, study, or education. These societies believed that cinema, properly handled, could illuminate, educate, and elevate. They didn’t dismiss the vulgarity of popular entertainment films — they often shared the same criticisms — but they believed that better films, carefully curated and thoughtfully presented, could do something more.

What emerged was a unique cultural posture: sceptical enthusiasm. These early film society organisers and advocates believed that cinema was too important to be left to the marketplace, too influential to be ignored, and too potentially rich to be written off as mere distraction. In short, they were both wary and hopeful — critics and champions at the same time.

In the broader story of the Film Society Movement, this dialectic is often overlooked. We are used to associating film societies with cinephilia — a love of cinema for its artistry, its subtlety, its difference from the commercial mainstream. But before this sensibility took root, there was a moral and intellectual urgency: a desire to make sense of a powerful new medium, and to bring it under the guidance of cultural stewardship. Film societies were not born from aesthetic admiration alone. They were born, in part, from a crisis — and from the belief that such a crisis could be met not by rejecting cinema, but by reclaiming it.

2. The Forgotten Foundation: Film Societies as Educators

When we think of film societies today, the immediate association is often with the love of cinema as an art form: screenings of international films, discussion of directors and techniques, a kind of cultivated cinephilia. But this was not the starting point. Before film societies became sanctuaries for artistic appreciation, they were laboratories for public education.

In early 20th-century Germany and Austria, the very idea of using film to cultivate understanding and convey knowledge was considered radical. At a time when cinema was associated with lurid melodrama and low-class entertainment, a small but determined circle of educators and scientists began to see its potential as an educational medium. These weren’t filmmakers by trade. They were teachers, naturalists, astronomers, physiologists, engineers — many of them drawn from the same networks that powered the amateur science movement of the late 19th century.

What united them was the conviction that cinema could be a visual language for explaining the world. It could illuminate scientific processes, illustrate geographic discoveries, and render visible the hidden patterns of life — from microscopic organisms to cosmic phenomena. They were not concerned with cinematic style or narrative innovation. Their interest was pedagogical: they wanted to teach through film.

This was not some passing fad. Clubs like the Kosmos Society for Artistic and Scientific Cinematography were formed explicitly to screen scientific films, host lectures, and encourage group study. Films were often shown alongside live commentary or printed guides. Subjects ranged from biology to ballistics, from silk worms to planetary orbits. Many of the films were produced by scientists themselves, and screenings were often held in observatories, laboratories, and lecture halls. The audience wasn’t expected to passively consume these films — they were expected to engage, discuss, and learn.

What makes this origin story so important — and so often forgotten — is that these early film societies were not focused on elevating cinema to the status of high art. They were concerned with something arguably more urgent: using cinema to make knowledge accessible to ordinary people. This wasn’t entertainment; it was enlightenment by design.

Moreover, their educational ambition wasn’t merely top-down. These societies promoted amateur filmmaking as a hands-on mode of learning. Members were encouraged to experiment with cameras, create their own instructional films, and explore film as a tool of investigation. In this sense, film was not just a medium to be watched, but a method to be used. This practice mirrored the experimental ethos of the amateur science movement, with its emphasis on curiosity, documentation, and shared discovery.

It is tempting to imagine that the art-focused phase of the Film Society Movement simply replaced this early educational model. But the truth is more complex. The educational film society was the first coherent form of what we now call a film society. It was not a prelude or an anomaly. It was the foundation — and, in some ways, its mission remains more urgent than ever.

3. The Amateur Science Connection

To understand the earliest film societies in the German-speaking world, one must step outside the cinematic frame entirely — into the realm of amateur science. These early clubs did not simply borrow some techniques or aesthetic sensibilities from scientific culture. They were, in many cases, organically rooted in it.

Late 19th- and early 20th-century Europe saw a flourishing of what we might call citizen science: local societies dedicated to astronomy, botany, microscopy, chemistry, and electrical experimentation. These were groups not of professional researchers, but of curious, disciplined, and highly engaged laypeople. Their ethos was participatory and hands-on — often collaborative, occasionally eccentric, but always serious in spirit.

It is within this milieu that cinema found one of its earliest and most surprising allies. Emerging film societies frequently shared personnel, venues, and goals with amateur science associations. They often operated in the same buildings, published in the same journals, and were driven by many of the same questions: How can we make complex knowledge accessible? How can we engage the public in discovery? What tools can help us visualise the unseen?

Cinema, as it turned out, offered a new answer to all these questions.

Consider the Kosmos Society for the Friends of Nature, an association that pioneered immersive scientific learning through hands-on kits and visual demonstrations. Their film society offshoot, the Kosmos Club for Artistic and Scientific Cinematography, adopted this same model — but with moving images. Film wasn’t simply a subject of interest; it was a means of inquiry. Members were encouraged not just to watch films, but to study them, discuss them, and in some cases, make them.

Other societies, like the Cinematographic Study Society (founded in 1913 by Berlin astronomer Friedrich Simon Archenhold), were directly connected to observatories and public science institutions. Their screenings were held in lecture halls, often featuring scientific films produced by specialists. Articles in their journals were written by contributors with backgrounds in neurology, physics, education, and engineering — not in theatre or literature.

This overlap was not incidental. It reflected a shared belief that the pursuit of knowledge could be visual, communal, and democratising. Just as amateur scientists used microscopes to reveal hidden structures of life, early film society members used projectors to reveal processes and patterns invisible to the naked eye — from the path of a star to the emergence of a bee from its hive.

What we see here is not film as art, or even film as storytelling. This is film as epistemology: a way of seeing and knowing. And it was precisely this scientific seriousness that helped elevate the film society concept in its earliest years. Before “cinema appreciation” was a recognised cultural category, film found refuge in the laboratory, the lecture hall, and the hands of disciplined amateurs.

It is easy to forget this today — especially when the Film Society Movement is narrated primarily through its artistic and aesthetic chapters. But behind the screen, behind the flickering images, there was once a telescope, a chemistry set, and a determined spirit of amateur inquiry. The early film society was, in many cases, a scientific salon with a projector.

4. The Feedback Loop Ideal

For the early film societies of Germany and Austria, film was not merely something to be consumed. It was something to be shaped — and through that shaping, to exert an influence beyond the screening room. This ambition is captured in what we might call the Feedback Loop Ideal: the belief that educated audiences could help elevate the film industry itself.

The logic was elegant: if film societies could expose their members to thoughtful, high-quality cinema — especially films that educated, inspired, or clarified the world — then public taste could be transformed. In turn, this new and improved audience sensibility would generate new expectations. Filmmakers and distributors, responding to this evolved demand, would begin to produce better films. Thus, a self-reinforcing cycle could be set in motion: audience cultivation → demand transformation → industry improvement.

This was not a utopian daydream. It was a strategy — and one that informed both programming choices and public messaging. Societies like the Kosmos Club believed that films weren’t merely to be admired or critiqued. They were to be acted upon, socially and culturally. Viewers were not passive. They were participants in a cultural system, whose choices and conversations could have measurable effects.

Some of the strongest evidence for this belief can be found in the writings of Otto Theodor Stein, who drew direct comparisons between film societies and art appreciation clubs. Just as societies of art lovers had successfully created broader public interest in the visual arts, he argued, so too could film societies generate wider enthusiasm for cinema that was thoughtful, instructive, and well made. Members would not only be viewers — they would become informed ambassadors for a better kind of cinema.

This idea — that audiences could help “redeem” cinema through their informed choices — became a central tenet of the Film Society Movement* in its earliest years. It placed a special responsibility on curators and educators: to program wisely, to challenge respectfully, to encourage discussion and discernment. And it gave purpose to audiences beyond entertainment. Watching a film became an act of cultural citizenship.

There is something almost daring about this ideal. It assumes that the film industry is not an immovable machine, but a system of signals and responses — and that the signal sent by a well-run film society could ripple outward, however modestly, into the broader cinematic landscape. It treats taste not as a fixed trait, but as something that can be shaped — and can, in turn, shape others.

In our present era, where media consumption is often guided by algorithms and marketing demographics, the Feedback Loop Ideal might seem quaint. But in its time, it was profoundly hopeful. It suggested that films could change people, and that people — organised, curious, and articulate — could change films.

*Interjection

Some may object to this framing. They might argue that what we’re describing here — these education-driven, scientifically inclined clubs — were not really part of the Film Society Movement, but merely its precursors. I strongly contest that view. One need only look to Cinema 16, one of the most important American film societies of the mid-20th century, to see how enduring and legitimate this educational strand was. Its programs regularly included both aesthetically experimental works and instructional films — documentaries about science, society, and ideas. For Cinema 16’s founders, this pairing was not contradictory but coherent. Education and artistry were seen not as rivals, but as complementary missions. A baby may not yet have a name when it is born — but it is still a baby. An explorer may reach an unknown, unnamed river, but it is still that river. The fact that these societies had not yet adopted the now-familiar trappings of cinephilia does not make them less genuine. They were film societies by every functional and philosophical measure. They gathered communities, selected films, framed screenings with intellectual intent, and used cinema as a tool for collective exploration. Therefore they rightfully deserve to be considered the Film Society Movement.

5. Three Phases — Not an Evolution, but a Sequence of Coexisting Paradigms

Looking back over the history of film societies — in Germany and Austria from the 1910s, in Australia from the 1930s, and across much of the world — a pattern emerges. Film societies, though diverse in form and motive, often pass through three broad phases of orientation:

Phase 1: Education
Phase 2: Art
Phase 3: Activism

Each phase brings with it a distinct set of motivations, methods, and cultural associations. In the first, cinema is used primarily to inform and illuminate — as a modern extension of the classroom, the observatory, or the public lecture. In the second, cinema is treated as a form of artistic expression worthy of serious aesthetic analysis and appreciation. In the third, cinema becomes a vehicle for ideological persuasion and political action — a medium not only for observing the world, but for changing it.

It is tempting to interpret these phases as stages in a kind of cultural evolution — as if the educational societies were primitive, the artistic ones mature, and the activist ones reactionary or advanced depending on one’s politics. But this would be a misreading. These phases are not steps on a ladder. They are paradigms that coexist, overlap, and resurface across time and place.

The German experience illustrates this clearly. In the 1910s and early 1920s, film societies were closely aligned with the amateur science movement and focused on public education. In the mid-1920s, new groups emerged dedicated to exploring cinema as a legitimate art form, complete with theoretical writings and curated retrospectives. Then, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, politically charged societies arose, using cinema to counter rising extremism or to promote social change — often through highly curated, ideologically driven programming.

Australia followed a similar pattern, though delayed by several decades. Post-WWII film societies were strongly oriented toward documentary and educational programming, shaped by wartime sensibilities and a renewed interest in public knowledge. Then came the influx of European migrants and a broader cultural opening, which ushered in the art cinema phase — foreign films, auteur theory, festivals, and the rise of film as cultural capital. Later still, film societies with explicit political leanings emerged, programming films that engaged with environmentalism, civil rights, and global justice.

That these phases occurred in both contexts — despite different histories, populations, and cultural influences — strongly suggests that the shift from education to art to activism is not merely a product of local conditions (such as, in Australia’s case, post-war migration), but reflects deeper patterns in how new media are socially adopted. First comes the urge to prove the medium’s seriousness and utility. Then comes a period of aesthetic exploration. Then come the ideological battles over what the medium should do — and for whom.

This model of coexisting paradigms offers a more accurate and generous reading of the Film Society Movement’s many incarnations. It avoids the trap of ranking or dismissing certain approaches. And it reminds us that a movement is not defined by a single goal or aesthetic preference, but by its shared commitment to using cinema deliberately and with purpose — whether that purpose is illumination, inspiration, or agitation.

The early German and Austrian societies did not “evolve” into artistic or political ones. Nor did Australian societies discard their educational beginnings when they embraced art cinema. Each phase added a new layer, a new set of possibilities. If there is a lesson in all this, it may be this:

The Film Society Movement has never been just one thing — and it should never be reduced to one.

Conclusion

The educational roots of the Film Society Movement are not a relic of the past — they are a guide to our future.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, film societies in Germany and Austria used cinema to bring knowledge to life. They forged new methods of learning, fostered public curiosity, and welcomed members not merely as spectators, but as participants in a grand experiment of discovery and dialogue. That spirit — of intellectual adventure, of popular education, of hands-on inquiry — remains as vital today as it was then.

ACOFS recognises this deep lineage. It is no accident that in 2024, we formally joined Adult Learning Australia, aligning ourselves with the broader Lifelong Learning Movement. We see our role not just as curators of great films, but as champions of public learning — encouraging Film Societies to use cinema as a springboard into history, science, ethics, technology, philosophy, art, and culture.

This is why I believe so strongly in the value of educational film programming, in study groups, in documentaries, in thematic screenings that open conversations rather than close them. We have inherited more than a format. We have inherited a mission.

If the Film Society Movement is to thrive – and it will — we must be bold and imaginative. And we shall. We will embrace new technology with the same eagerness that our founders embraced projectors, film reels, and lecture slides. We will be curious, adaptable, and willing to experiment with online formats, streaming tools, interactive features, and hybrid experiences. Not to replace what we love — but to extend it.

The Film Society Movement is not a museum. It is a pillar of Australian cultural life, and one that will continue to grow, change, and inspire.

That is my promise to you as President of ACOFS:

We will honour our founders.
We will welcome our pioneers.
We will pursue both Art & learning with excellence with energy and with joy.
And above all — our best days are ahead of us.

Let us meet them, together.