SMOKESCREEN 2024: 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.

This year’s Smokescreen series ‘Scene Stealing Style’ looks at how art direction, the look and feel of a film can help to tell the story. You may not have heard of the films on the list but each is iconic, and in its own way set standards and shaped later generations of film making.

Tickets include a 'Buy one, get one free' offer 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 $75 by purchasing a season pass or you can see a single film for $10.

2024 Film Schedule

3 February 2024 | 4pm

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Director: Peter Weir

Starring: Rachel Roberts, Dominic Guard, Helen Morse, Jacki Weaver

Run Time: 115mins

Rating: PG

Described by one critic as an Australian horror romance, Picnic at Hanging Rock has left an indelible mark on the Australian psyche. The beautiful cinematography paints a haunting picture of the Australian bush, an ancient place, where modern logic does not apply and inexplicable things can happen. Paired against this is the well-dressed Victorian young women who on a seemingly innocent outing go missing.

2 March 2024 | 4pm

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Director: Howard Hawks

Starring: Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe

Run Time: 91 minutes

Rating: PG

There is no doubt that Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,’ in a pink satin dress is one of the iconic images from this era of Classic Hollywood. But Gentlemen prefer Blondes is a glitzy and stylish Technicolor comedy from start to finish, driven in large part by the appeal of Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe, described by one reviewer ‘as nothing short of sensational.

6 April 2024 | 4pm

The Third Man (1949)

Director: Carol Reed

Starring: Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard

Run Time: 104mins

Rating: PG

The Third Man is a film that embraces an expressionist cinematography, assisted by filming in the devastated landscape of post war Vienna, a landscape of rubble and bomb craters.

4 May 2024 | 4pm

House of the Flying Daggers (2004)

Director: Zhang Yimou

Starring: Andy Lau, Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro

Run Time: 119mins

Rating: M

House of the Flying Dagger’s is a Chinese language historical romance. A rich elaborate beautifully stylish film that links, costume, set design, and cinematography. One of the most spectacular elements of this film are the martial arts sequences, which are beautifully stylised even balletic, while the use of colour (which plays on the concept of Wuxing Colour Theory) creates a film that reviewer Robert Ebert described as a ‘kinetic artwork installation.’

1 June 2024 | 4pm

The Towering Inferno (1974)

Director: John Guillermin

Starring: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely,

Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, O.J. Simpson, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner

Run Time: 165mins

Rating: PG

The 1970s was an era when Hollywood embraced the disaster flick. There were films about boats turning over, earthquakes, nuclear melt downs and many more. And towering over all these film is the The Towering Inferno a genre defining blockbuster.

6 Jul 2024 | 4pm

Coffy (1973)

Director: Jack Hill

Starring: Pam Grier, Booker Bradshaw, Robert DoQui, William Elliott, Allan Arbus, Sid Haig

Run Time: 91mins

Rating: R18

Due to the Classification only patrons over the age of 18 will be admited.

In investigating films with style, it is impossible not to include a film from the subgenre known as ‘Blaxploitation’. Blaxploitation films emerged in the 1970s focusing on stories and protagonists from America’s Black community.

3 August 2024 | 4pm

On the Waterfront (1954)

Director: Elia Kazan

Starring: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning, Eva Marie Saint

Run Time: 108mins

Rating: PG

Marlon Brando gives one of his best performances in the gritty tale of union corruption on the docks of Hobokon New Jersey. Reviewer Robert Ebert describes Brando’s acting as cutting through ‘decades of screen mannerisms’ providing a ‘quirky acting style that was not realism so much as a kind of heightened riff on reality.’

7 September 2024 | 4pm

Swing Time (1936)

Director: George Stevens

Starring: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers

Run Time: 103 mins

Rating: PG

Ginger Roger and Fred Astaire, two icons of the silver screen star in the magical musical Swing time a touchstone for Hollywood elegance, style and taste. It was one a several musicals the duo would make in the 1930s, and there is no denying the electric chemistry and their joy of performing.

5 October 2024 | 4pm

The Shining (1980)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Danny Lloyd

Run Time: 146mins

Rating: MA15

Licensing: Roadshow

Few horror films are as visually potent as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Unlike many horror films, it is a glorious enigma. A film that makes us question everything as we watch the characters descend into madness dealing with an impossible world of ghostly bartenders, corridors of blood and haunted ball rooms.

2 November 2024 | Double Feature

Film 1 | 2pm

The Red Shoes (1948)

Director: Michael Powell

Starring: Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Moira Shearer, Léonide Massine, Robert Helpmann, Albert Bassermann, Esmond Knight, Ludmilla Tchérina

Run Time: 134mins

Rating: G

A film about dance that is not a musical but an enigmatic depiction of the world of Ballet. The Red Shoes continues to be one of the best ballet films ever made. It was the first film to interrupt the story for an extended dance sequence, a masterpiece of cinematography, as the camera transforms the dancers and stage into a surreal landscape. The Red Shoes remains a haunting masterpiece and is still considered one of the most influential films about the world of dance.

Film 2 | 4pm

Bullitt (1968)

Director: Peter Yates

Starring: Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Simon Oakland, Norman Fell

Run Time: 113mins

Rating: M

Licensing: Roadshow

All guts and no glory, Steve McQueen is at his best in this stylish action film. Bullitt helped to cement many of the troupes that today we take for granted in any good action film, the tough but world-weary cop, a fast pasted plot, and most notably the iconic car chase.