Revisiting Cinefex

I started collecting Cinefex in the early 1980s. Many years later, on a whim, I decided to re-read the first few issues in my Cinefex collection and blog about them as I went along, in a series of retrospective reviews called Revisiting Cinefex.

The next thing I knew, Cinefex publisher Don Shay and editor Jody Duncan had both emailed to tell me how much they were enjoying my articles. You could have knocked me down with a feather.

It took me a little over two years to blog my way through the first forty issues of Cinefex. Together these represent the journal’s first decade of publication and neatly span the 1980s, that amazing decade during which the summer blockbuster came of age and effects movies took over the top ten box office charts. The ’80s also saw the beginning of the digital revolution. At the precise time all the traditional optical and mechanical techniques were being pushed to the limit, CG was quietly on the rise.

Here’s what Don Shay had to say when I reached the end of my retrospective odyssey:

[Graham’s blog articles] represent a fine history of visual effects in the Golden Age between motion control and digital imaging.
Don Shay, Cinefex founder

My Revisiting Cinefex journey might be over, but I’m by no means done with visual effects. After I completed my fortieth article, Don invited me to set up and run a new Cinefex blog. That in turn led to me joining the Cinefex editorial team full-time as senior staff writer, a position I held until the magazine sadly closed in 2021.

Below are links to all forty Revisiting Cinefex articles: