Meridale Film Week closed its 44th edition on Sunday with a record 90,000 admissions — and with the unlikeliest queue in the festival’s history: around the block, in July heat, for a 58-year-old film.
The rebuilt print of “The Harbour Light”, Coravia’s celebrated “lost” 1968 drama reconstructed over four years from three partial negatives found in a Port Halvern warehouse, sold out all five screenings and anchored an archive strand that sold out entirely for the first time.
“We programmed the restorations as heritage. The audience received them as premieres,” said festival director Ona Prelle, noting that a third of archive-strand tickets went to attendees under 30.
The contemporary programme had its moments too: the Veskan drama “Runoff” took the festival’s main prize days before its country votes in an actual run-off, a coincidence its director milked gleefully from the stage. Accord-wide attendance — up sharply in the visa-free corridor’s first festival season — accounted for a fifth of admissions.
The festival confirmed the restoration programme will continue with two further titles from the same warehouse find. “The Harbour Light” enters general release in September — the first 1960s Coravian film ever to do so twice.