I remember receiving a stream of late night texts in 2014, from a Melbourne friend who was incensed that the Greater Union cinema on Russell Street was being torn down – its incredible wood-panelled lobby walls thrown into scrap, its projectors shut off for good. Emily made a deal with one of the crew hired to gut the place and managed to salvage two neon lights before the skip bins were retrieved at dawn.
By that point I was fatigued by the sheer number of cinemas that had closed during my own cultural lifetime, and vowed never to frequent whatever business would rise from its ashes. Four years later I found myself checking into the hotel on that very site, while visiting from Sydney to host a post-screening Q&A at the Melbourne international film festival. The popcorn might stop popping, but life moves on. I get it.
Almost all of my childhood and adolescent cinema haunts have now been shuttered. I grew up in Sydney’s north-western suburbs and my local was the beautiful Roxy in Parramatta, built in 1929 in a Spanish mission style. At one point my sister researched its architectural history for a university assignment, and I tagged along to her daytime site visits attempting to locate the ghost that supposedly haunted the upper level.
Closed as a cinema since 2004, a proposal to renovate the Roxy as a 29-storey mixed use development was mercifully stymied by the NSW Land and Environment Courts last year. These iconic sites are so often under threat, and unprotected by statutory heritage protection, like the long-closed Globe theatre.
Like many, my nostalgia for the cinemas of my youth runs deep. The Valhalla in Glebe – whose printed posters I studied endlessly as a teen, wondering what Meet the Feebles was and why they recommended imbibing before arrival for a late night session of Baraka – is now an office block. The Academy Twin on Oxford Street sits dormant after being vacated a decade ago. The Mandolin on Phillip Street, the Dendy cinemas in Martin Place and George Street, along with countless others, gone.
Add in all the cinemas that were closed before my time, and you’ve got yourself a modern cultural tragedy. Until recently I’d walk past the Metro in Potts Point (a theatre, a cinema, now the home of George Miller’s production studio) every day on my way to and from work, attempting to conjure up an image of its fabled Norman Lindsay mural, long gone.
Sydney still has a handful of very beautiful art deco cinemas like the Cremorne Orpheum and the Randwick Ritz; there are nicely refurbished Palace and Dendy sites scattered throughout the city, and it’s always a delight to visit Mt Vic Flicks in the Blue Mountains.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a historic or upscale cinema experience – I’ve lovingly programmed Golden Age Cinema, housed in the heritage-listed Paramount House in Surry Hills, since it opened in 2013, and am now a programmer at MIFF – but the news that Event cinemas on George Street is closing has hit surprisingly hard.
The strip of cinemas on George Street opened in 1976 with much fanfare (complete with a sign o’the times performing elephant), and instead of the current single Event cinemas configuration, it used to house three: Greater Union, Hoyts, and Village.
I remember trundling along there as a child with my mother, pausing to paw through the poster shop that used to be underground, and returning later as a teen on school holidays (and sometimes during school hours too).
I remember the midnight sessions of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and A Clockwork Orange, and picking up a friend who worked at the Village candy bar after her shift, where she’d change out of her uniform in my car, idling on Kent Street, before we’d drive to the same Britpop club every Sunday night.
I may opt for a hand-dipped choctop and a glass of natural wine while seeing a film these days, but megaplexes are a rite of passage. The new plan for the George Street Cinema site is for a 270 apartment development which would also include a boutique cinema.
As my friend Fleur pointed out on Twitter, gone are the days for people my age when “you would be a bit on edge going on a Saturday night in case you got rolled for your Nokia”, but megaplexes are still a hotspot for teenagers who – as I was – may just be starting out on a lifetime love of film. (Even my candy bar friend is now in an executive position at an international distributor.) They’re important for families who want to feel comfortable taking a whole motley brood out on a special trip, and they’re necessary for people who need to make the most of cut-price tickets and combo deals.
The George Street cinema has also become an integral venue for film festivals in recent years – its sheer size alone allows enough of an audience to break even (or, in an ideal world, be profitable).
It’s not so much the particular cinema closing that has rankled so many of us since the development plan was released, but the notion that we’re constantly losing different kinds of cinema experiences.
One of the Melbourne cinema neons that my friend Emily rescued is an enormous “coming attractions” sign, and I’ve been thinking of that phrase often in the last couple of months as cinemas the world over sit in the dark and wait during Covid-19 restrictions.
It’s much too early to tell what the cinema landscape will be like when they are able to reopen, with social distancing measures still in place and a disrupted production and distribution release schedule. Until we can be together again, be it clinking cocktail glasses at a small release film or ridiculously oversized sodas over a blockbuster (or vice versa!), at least we can turn off our own lights at home and partake in online film festivals or while away an isolated afternoon revisiting our own picture palace history.
But I do long for the communal experience – endless pre-show and all – and live in hope that those spaces will be waiting for us on the other side.
• Kate Jinx is a programmer at Melbourne international film festival (MIFF), director of programming at Golden Age Cinema in Sydney, and a film writer and critic.
