It was in the witching hours of a long evening when I was a very young man that I truly realised the power of free-to-air TV to broaden our cinematic horizons. Slumped in front of the boob tube with a couple of friends, our guts stuffed full of pizza and munchies, I changed the channel and stumbled upon a film that came out the screen like a clap of thunder.

It was a spectacular Italian/French/German co-production depicting several things pertinent to contemporary society, such as zombie brides, the travails of a skull-splitting cemetery watchman played by Rupert Everett, and various instances of heads literally rolling. Suddenly we were awake, wide-eyed on the edge of our seats.

Courtesy of some maniac programmer at SBS, my young self was delivered a powerful message: Europeans films aren’t necessarily socially conscientious dramas about adulterer potato farmers. It was a cinematic awakening. Pandora’s box had been opened, and from it flowed a parade of freaky-deaky European genre films that I became devoted to tracking down: the cinema of fantastic fruitcakes such as Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

That is why the announcement of a new 24-hour TV channel launched by SBS and devoted to world movies slapped a smile across my face, instilling in me a modicum of hope that younger generations will stop rewatching all those goddamn Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and broaden their film-viewing horizons.

SBS World Movies, which launched this week, is a free-to-air channel rather than a streaming service, so today’s yoof will need to go “on the dial” to find it. But there is some benefit in the curated programming of broadcast TV, as opposed to the streaming free-for-all.

The proliferation of streaming service providers has brought the cinematic world to our fingertips, but like anything, with the good comes the bad. In the streaming landscape the onus lies on the viewer to determine what they want to watch, which is often not an easy task in a world with more content than ever.

French comic actor and film-maker Jacques Tati. Photograph: Yale Joel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

The homepages of platforms such as Netflix push their latest marquee titles, and use algorithms to cater to viewers’ tastes – hardly encouraging radically different experiences. The programming of SBS World Movies (which will include many films that don’t get a theatrical or home release in Australia) is the same kind of curated experience as a film festival, the viewer surrendering some autonomy and throwing themselves at the mercy of cineastes.

Thus the thrill of the cinematic lucky dip: where the lows might be films that aren’t your jam, but the mind-boggling highs more than make up for it.

SBS describes its new channel as “a celebration of the very best of world cinema”. They have pledged to broadcast over 700 films a year, with at least half of them in a language other than English. That Italian zombie movie I mentioned at the start, by the way, is called Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man). A representative from SBS told me the network does not yet have plans to program it on the new channel. Something tells me, though, that Rupert Everett and the zombie bride will be back, lifting the spirits and blowing the minds of another generation of late-night movie watchers.

Highlights reel

Hours and hours of Studio Ghibli

The jewel in SBS’s crown to my mind is what’s playing every weekend throughout July. From 6am to 7:30pm every Saturday and Sunday, the channel is broadcasting back-to-back screenings of animated films produced by the great Japanese production company Studio Ghibli, including Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, Kiki’s Delivery Service and The Wind Rises.

These films are famously difficult to locate online, the company maintaining tight control over rights and accessibility. Try, for example, to find the Oscar-winning Spirited Away – among the finest animated films ever made, from the great auteur Hayao Miyazaki – and you’re more likely to locate conversations about how nobody can find it rather than the film itself.

Jacques Tati’s back catalogue

The inimitable French film-maker Jacques Tati’s amazing oeuvre includes my favourite feature film: the 1967 masterpiece Playtime: a hallmark in complex, spatially oriented visual comedy. Other Tati gems screening on the channel include Mon Oncle (another masterpiece) and The Illusionist (based on an unproduced screenplay by Tati, homaging his work).

Regular celebrations of women in film every Thursday

Highlights from this ongoing slot include the entertaining and highly unusual coming-of-age drama Pin Cushion, from British writer/director Deborah Haywood, and the eye-watering epic The Assassin – director Hsiao-Hsien Hou’s lavish martial arts movie set in ancient China.