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With longer days and warm nights, summer in Melbourne is for outdoor cinema, and this summer we’ve put together our biggest program yet, as part of Open Air at the Square.Explore each mini film program and gather family and film-loving friends to catch a summer of free evening outdoor cinema.
Wild Westerns features three Western films – or films that inspired classic Westerns – across three nights, characterised by sweeping cinematography, epic arid landscapes and the intimacy of the close-up scene.
The program includes the 1968 Sergio Leone spaghetti Western, Once Upon a Time in the West; the 2010 film based on a true story of an intrepid group of pioneers attempting to cross the Oregon High Desert in 1845, Meek’s Cutoff, directed by Kelly Reichardt; and Akira Kurasawa’s 1954 action Seven Samurai (which inspired the 1960 Western classic The Magnificent Seven).
Seven Samurai (1954)
Wednesday 8 January, 8.30pm | Big Screen
Rated: PG – Mild violence
Voted number one in BBC Culture’s 100 greatest foreign-language films in 2018 and regarded as one of the most influential films of all time, this 1954 Japanese epic action film is considered director Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece. In a small village regularly looted by armed bandits in 1586 Japan, the village elder, Gisaku, advises the villagers to hire a ronin (masterless samurai) to defend them. The villagers hire the veteran Kambei Shimada, who advises that they need six other samurai to protect their lands. Kambei recruits the necessary samurai and they move to the village. After the village farmers’ initial distrust of the samurai, Kambei plots a defense strategy, and the samurai start training the farmers how to defend their lands and families for the battle that approaches.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Fed Square, Corner of Swanston and Flinders Streets,Melbourne,VIC,Australia
