 With the receipt of its own support from the federally funded Australian Film Commission (AFC), the Co-op opened its own 100-seat cinema in St Peters Lane Darlinghurst in 1973, with the upstairs premises used for film distribution and production of the newspaper Filmnews, begun in February 1975.The paper was initially little more than a supplement to the Co-op's Film Catalogue, but later developed into an independent journal which provided a critical look at issues affecting the production, distribution and exhibition of film and video in Australia.With the beginnings of the Co-op coinciding with the burgeoning of the Women's Liberation movement, and of the Aboriginal Land Rights movement, the Co-op distributed and exhibited some of the first Australian films by, for, and about women, and some of the first films about Aboriginal Australian history and politics.