A generous donation and fortuitous circumstances sees new projector purchase
Hollywood comes to the Hinterland with a generous donation of over $43,000 from Maleny Film Society (MFS) to enable Maleny Community Centre to purchase a new top of the line laser projector and screening system. A combination of a substantial funding resource pool and a fortuitous opportunity to purchase a surplus import, has meant the two Maleny community groups were able to both acquire the screening equipment in time to replace the previously aging unit and benefit from a $10,000 discounted rate.
MFS president, Faith Baigent, said the society was one of the largest and longest running groups of its kind in Australia, and since the early 1990’s had enjoyed a long partnership with the Maleny Community Centre. With considerations around insurance issues, Faith said the size of the projector unit and the centre’s ability to apply for an additional Sunshine Coast Council major grant funding, meant it made sense for the asset to be ultimately owned by the community centre.
“MFS is a major hirer of the centre, and both our community run organisations have always enjoyed a collaborative arrangement. This was a wonderful way we could support the centre. It is important for us to give back to our community and we all continue to support each other,” Faith said.
Film society projectionist, Clem Davies, said the equipment had come a long way from the original 35mm film reels used until the early 2000’s, before technology evolved to E-cinema which he likened to using a USB and home projector setup, to the current D-Cinema equipment which is more high-end computer based. He said the new Japanese made screening equipment had a greater life expectancy, was more efficient and sustainable to run, and relatively straight-forward to use. “It took our projection team a few hours to initially learn how to use it and we are still learning as we go along. The clarity and quality of colours is good, and our films now come to us on a 100GB hard drive which we then download to the server and create the program from,” Clem explained.
President of the Maleny Community Centre, Peter Uhlmann, said the Centre strongly valued all of their community partnerships and he was very pleased of the ongoing benefit to the local community of this substantial acquisition.
“We have had a long and fruitful partnership with Maleny Film Society and this successful collaboration is further evidence of our strong community and the partnerships that thrive,” he said.
For more details, visit malenyfilmsociety.au/
