SMOKESCREEN 2023: Season Pass

Taking place at in the Drama Room at the WPCC, Smokescreen brings Dubbo residents the opportunity to witness iconic and influential films from the history of cinema.

All the films in the 2023 series of Smokescreen deal with an element of the Forbidden. Whether it is forbidden love, forbidden treasure, forbidden knowledge, or in our contemporary politically correct world, forbidden culture. That which is forbidden from us is all the more irresistible, and films are a wonderful way to explore these darker elements of human nature safely from the comfort of the cinema.

Tickets include a complimentary standard drink at the Establishment following the film. The Establishment is an 18+ Venue only, please check each film for the Classification.

​See all 11 films for $70 by purchasing a season pass or you can see a single film for $10.

2023 Film Schedule

4 February 2023 | 4pm

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman

Run Time: 1h 41m

Rating: M

Sometimes dismissed a typical Hitchcock thriller, this film which centres on the charged interactions between the two male protagonists (Bruno and Guy) has many elements of the Forbidden. How do you react to your darkest desire becoming real? Do you eagerly embrace them? Or regret ever voicing such desires? As Bruno and Guy struggle against each other, one wonders in the rigidly gendered world of the 1940s that this film does not hint at something more.

4 March 2023 | 4pm

Casablanca (1942)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreld

Run Time: 102 min

Rating: PG

Casablanca is a beautifully picturesque film exploring struggle between duty and love that remains compelling today. Made at a time when an allied victory of the Second World War was far from assured, it is imbued with wartime tension, and yet it does not twist the ‘forbidden love’ into something dark and destructive. It is simply an elegant tale of honour and love that many filmmakers have emulated but few have achieved.

1 April 2023 | 4pm

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) - 1 Apr 2023

Director: Robert Mulligan

Starring: Gregory Peck, John Megna, Frank Overton

Runtime: 129m

Rating: PG

So many elements of this film deal with the forbidden, civil rights in the deep south, interactions between whites and blacks outside of the prescribed roles of master and servant, and the imaginative world of childhood where a reclusive neighbour becomes a foreboding and forbidden monster. It is a masterful film that even today resonates.

13 May 2023 | 4pm

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1984)

Director: Robert Zeemeckis

Starring: Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Charles Fleischer, Stubby Kaye, Joanna Cassidy

Runtime: 104m

Rating: PG

While Who Framed roger Rabbit, was not the first live action film produced (remember Mary Poppins) it was ground breaking in its seamless ability to combine amination with live action. But it did more than expand amination technology it subverts our understanding of cartoons as something innocent and wholesome. In this norish world, ‘Toons’ are sexy, duplicitous, and face real world consequences for their actions, navigating a world that is corrupt and jaded.

Yet they retain an element of cartoonish kooky humour, that only adds to the subversive nature of the film, and our adult enjoyment of something who know should be left behind in childhood./ should be for children. Few have tried to recreate the magic of live action for an adult audience, but none have matched the combination of genre blending story with seamless amination which continues to make this film so appealing.

3 June 2023 | 4pm

Chinatown (1974) - 3 Jun 2023

Director: Roman Polanski

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Hillerman, Perry Lopez, Burt Young, John Huston

Chinatown plays on many of the popular troupes of the Film Noir genre. It’s dark, dirty and cynical, dealing with a number of themes that even today are controversial and often forbidden, rape, incest, and the power of corporate greed to destroy people and our environment. Themes that are no less powerful today, as we continue to grapple with environmental degradation and the controversial issue of climate change.

Runtime: 130min

Rating: R

8 Jul 2023 | 4pm

Stalag 17 (1953)

Director: Billy Wilder

Starring: William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger

Runtime: 120m

Rating: G

Is it ever acceptable to laugh at trauma? Today Stalag 17 might seem offensive to modern sensibilities, one more element of pop culture to be cancelled. But to do so is to miss Billy Wilder’s aim to tell a story that is both tough and funny subverting the established themes of heroic endurance dominating war films of the period.

5 August 2023 | 4pm

White Heat (1949)

Director: Raoul Walsh

Starring: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmund Obrien, Margaret Wycherly, Steve Cochran

Runtime: 114m

Rating: PG

The psychopathic criminal has a long history in cinema, and yet we as audiences cannot seem to get enough. There is something fascinating and forbidden about them as they contravene the normal rules of society, behaving ways that seem devastatingly familiar and completed unfathomable.

2 September 2023 | 4pm

The China Syndrome (1979)

Director: James Bridges

Starring: Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas

When the China syndrome hit cinemas, in the late 1970s, nuclear power was hailed as the answer to the growing energy crisis. The China syndrome explored what could happen in the event of a nuclear meltdown. Twelve days after it premiered the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial core meltdown. The consequence of the nuclear accident, investigation and clean up caused a massive public outcry. Today nuclear power, rather than being the answer to the world’s energy needs, has become the ultimate source of forbidden power.

Runtime: 123mins

Rating: PG

7 October 2023 | 4pm

Sorry Wrong Number (1948)

Director: Anatole Litvak

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck

Runtime: 89m

Rating: PG

An invalid woman accidently over hears a murder plot, the introduction to a fantastic film noir, but also an insight how destructive forbidden knowledge can be, as she slowly descends into fear and panic, one asks is ignorance bliss?

4 November 2023 | Double Feature

Film 1 | 2pm

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Director: John Huston

Starring: Humphry Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre, Barton MacLane, Lee Patrick, Sydney Greenstreet

Runtime: 101m

Rating: PG

The classic noir set up of a jaded private investigator dragged into a complicated crime as a cast of crazy characters compete to find a priceless mysterious idol. This dark claustrophobic gritty film is a story of forbidden desires, the desire for the bejewelled idol and the riches if offers, and the desire for the beautiful femme fatale despite the danger she presents. It is as Sam Spade wearily notes ‘the stuff that dreams are made of.’

Film 2 | 4pm

The Exorcist (1973)

Director: William Friedkin

Starring: Eleen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Jason Millar, Linda Blair

Runtime 127m

Rating: R18+

Exorcism, has always been a forbidden element of Christian religion. So when The Exorcist premiered in 1973, it caused a stir. There were claims of people fainting at the cinema, while critics deplored the films depictions of Satanism and teenage sexuality. Today is it considered one of the scariest films ever made, and a classic of the horror genre, but still retains an element of the forbidden