WE know Canberrans love a good freebie, and there’s a very special one on offer today as the ANU Film Group launches its 2015 program with “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” and a post-screening Q&A.

Joining the group for its impressive 49th year will be actor Stephen Hunter (Bombur the Dwarf) and on-set colourist Ché Baker, who will discuss their experiences working on the one of the biggest trilogies of all time. Both are in town shooting a new sci-fi action film, “Blue World Order”.

Billing itself as “Australia’s biggest and best film society”, the film group promises 84 selected films covering “all genres, blockbusters, foreign language, documentaries and everything in between.”

All films are screened at the Coombs Theatre on the ANU Campus near the Menzies Library, which is a lecture theatre by day and a cinema by night with a full sized cinema screen, film and digital projection equipment and cinema-quality sound.

Annual membership costs $70 and entitles you to see any of the films shown each year. Members also get six guest passes to use with friends/ family and a booklet of reviews of each film written by members. Semester membership is $40 (with three guest passes).

Amongst the “not to be missed” films for Semester I are The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel , Still Alice, Winter Sleep, Mr Turner, Boyhood, Wild, St Vincent, Force Majeure, Jimmy’s Hall, The Water Diviner, Locke, Foxcatcher, Pride, My Old Lady, The Keeper of Lost Causes, Far From the Madding Crowd, Ida, Two Days and One Night, Selma, The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared, The Imitation Game, Whiplash, Unbroken and The Theory of Everything. On March 11 local director Simon Weaving, will introduce his latest film The Competition and do a Q & A afterwards.

“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”, Coombs Theatre, ANU campus, Monday 9 February at 7:30 PM. Doors will open from 7 PM. Free seating. Full program at anufg.org.au