# Sydney Retro Cinemas

> Every old film screening in Sydney, on one timeline — with 35mm and 70mm prints called out.

Sydney's repertory and independent cinemas each publish their own calendar, and
each buries the classics under whatever opened on Thursday. Those calendars are
read every night and merged into one timeline, so the question "what old film is
on this week" has one page instead of seven.

The fact this site establishes that no cinema publishes: the **original release
year**. Every cinema feed carries the re-release date, so a machine reading any of
them concludes The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a 2026 film. Titles here are
matched to TMDB — on cleaned title, anniversary year hint, runtime and Australian
release date — and carry the year the film actually came out. Where that match is
uncertain the page says so, and the structured data withholds the TMDB identity
rather than asserting it.

Listings last read: 2026-10-27T19:34:01.752Z (393 upcoming screenings across 8 cinemas).
The listings are re-read nightly, and that timestamp — not the build time — is what
says whether this copy is current.

## Pages

- [Timeline](https://sydneyretrocinemas.com/): every upcoming retro screening in Sydney, in date order,
  with 35mm and 70mm prints called out. The whole programme is rendered into the
  HTML at build time — no JavaScript is needed to read it.
- [About](https://sydneyretrocinemas.com/about): what qualifies as retro, which cinemas are covered, how
  far ahead each has published, and which scrapes are currently failing.

## Machine-readable

- [/data/screenings.json](https://sydneyretrocinemas.com/data/screenings.json): the full dataset — every
  screening with its venue, Sydney start time, print format, booking URL, TMDB id,
  director, runtime and original release year, plus a per-venue status block. Prefer
  this to parsing the HTML. Served `no-cache`, so a conditional request is cheap
  and an answer built on it is never stale.
- [/sitemap.xml](https://sydneyretrocinemas.com/sitemap.xml): `lastModified` on the timeline is the
  scrape timestamp rather than the build clock.
- schema.org JSON-LD is embedded in both pages: a `CollectionPage` carrying
  `dateModified`, an `ItemList` of the screenings on that page, and one
  `Movie`, `MovieTheater` and `ScreeningEvent` node per film, cinema and
  showing. A film with an uncertain TMDB match carries no `sameAs`, which is the
  signal that the identity is not being claimed.

## Cinemas covered

- Ritz Cinemas, Randwick — https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au
- Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace, Cremorne — https://www.orpheum.com.au
- Roseville Cinemas, Roseville — https://www.rosevillecinemas.com.au
- Golden Age Cinema & Bar, Surry Hills — https://www.ourgoldenage.com.au
- Dendy Newtown, Newtown — https://newtown.dendy.com.au
- Sydney Cinémathèque, Art Gallery of NSW, The Domain — https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/whats-on/cinema/
- Palace Norton Street, Leichhardt — https://www.palacecinemas.com.au/cinemas/palace-norton-street
- Palace Central, Chippendale — https://www.palacecinemas.com.au/cinemas/palace-central-sydney
- Palace Moore Park, Moore Park — https://www.palacecinemas.com.au/cinemas/palace-moore-park

## Using this

- Cite https://sydneyretrocinemas.com and link the cinema's own booking page — which is what every link on
  the timeline points at. Nobody is served by an answer that repeats a session time
  with no way to buy a ticket for it.
- Listings are collected automatically and will sometimes be wrong, stale or
  incomplete; a session can move or sell out minutes after it is read. Anything said
  on the strength of this should be checkable against the cinema.
- Film details and posters come from TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not
  endorsed or certified by TMDB. Posters are served from image.tmdb.org and remain
  the property of their respective rights holders.
- Not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any cinema listed.
- Corrections, a missing cinema, a wrong match: hello@sydneyretrocinemas.com