By Glenn Dunks
It’s curious to be watching a film such as Andrew Scarano’s Into the Shadows, since a large portion of the film is dedicated to investigating why Australian audiences don’t go see Australian films. And yet I’m sure the one thing Australian audiences want to see less than an Australian film is an Australian documentary on why they’re not going to Australian cinema. Okay, that’s complicated, but I’m sure you followed it.
Thankfully the film is, for the most part, an interesting and thorough exploration of this worthy topic. The documentary isn’t all about our homegrown disinterest, but also about the death of independent cinema in Australia and the tactics used by Hollywood to push local films out of the multiplex. The film is complied as a more traditional ‘talking heads’ style documentary, with occasional animation and a bevy of movie clips to liven the proceedings up. Anybody who saw the great Hunt Angels, which was out in 2006, will already be aware of the astonishing history of filmmaking in this country – we were once one of the largest industries in the world before the Hollywood heavyweights jumped in with their bullying and unfair practices – and these passages continue to amaze.
The movie’s trump card, however, is the segment on the closing of some of Australia’s most well-known independent cinemas; The Valhalla in Sydney, The Lumiere in Melbourne and Electric Shadows in Canberra feature prominently in the documentary and director Scarano even managed to take his camera inside the final night of Electric Shadows to document the sad event. These cinemas were on the front line, playing eccentric arthouse titles from around the world before Hollywood caught on. Frequently courting controversy – I recall The Lumiere playing soon-to-be-banned French film Baise-Moi causing uproar – and feeding an assortment of audience’s desires for cinema that was shocking, confronting, brilliant and exciting. All are now closed and new generations of film-lovers don’t know anything outside of the chain branded multiplexes that dot the suburbs like shopping malls.
Featuring an assortment of familiar and not-so-familiar faces, there are actors Brendan Cowell and Anthony Hayes, directors such as Bruce Beresford, Scott Hicks and Robert Connolly, as well as various cinema-operators and film scholars discussing the ins-and-outs of the business that is film distribution and exhibition. Into the Shadows isn’t a flashy movie, its low budget shows in the crude animation and I suspect it may have worked better as a two or three part TV documentary, but people interested in the inner-workings of cinema right on our doorstep should find it informative and worthy of hours of discussion.
Into The Shadows is on limited release from 29 October. Check their website for screening locations.
