• Louis Nowra
• The Monthly

Image: twenty_questions / flickr

14 January 2010There is a special sort of loneliness about sitting in a cinema on your own. Over the past year, I have frequently found myself watching an Australian movie as the sole member of an audience and, on three occasions, with only one other person in the cinema. Once the lights go down, it can be an uncomfortable, even spooky, feeling of detachment. Movie-going should be a communal activity of human smells, the eating of food, united laughter and tears. It heightens our pleasure to be able to share a common experience in a dark cave, entranced by what is happening on the giant screen filled with light. Unfortunately that didn’t happen to me very often, and the solitude probably made some dark films ever grimmer.

I set out to watch most of the Australian films released this year because I wanted to grasp the condition of our industry. On a practical level, it was often hard to find these films; they seldom stayed in the cinema long enough. I became used to tracking them to small independent cinemas that, judging by the tiny crowds, seemed to be showing them as a national duty. Occasionally, I had to use connections to scrounge up a bootleg DVD.

Most of the 2009 films had brief runs and only one – the very low-budget Samson and Delilah – has so far made back its money. Bruce Beresford’s Mao’s Last Dancer has made the most money and is now inching towards the $12 million mark. Most of the rest have failed badly. The output in 2009 has been enormous (over 30 and counting), but the commercial success rate has been dismal.

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Image: twenty_questions / flickr