Cinema, community and policy: contexts and pretexts for the Regional Cinema Program in New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

This article examines developments relating to regional cinema-going in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW). It draws on research whose primary case studies comprise four campaigns to revitalize historic cinema spaces in country towns in NSW and the introduction in the late 1990s of a Regional Cinema Program (RCP) designed to promote and support such activity in that state. It examines some of the historic and political contexts that precipitated these projects and the adoption of their concerns by the NSW state government and will consider how claims for the social importance of cinema-going have been reflected and constructed through the practices and discourses of policy-making and place-making. In particular, the essay traces the adoption of regional cinema access as a policy concern of the NSW state government and the aspirations and operations of a ‘community cinema’ in the south-western NSW town of Tumut. In focusing on this case study the article explores the interconnected relationship between trends in social and cultural policy-making, rural revitalization, the social experience of cinema-going and their various roles in the complex and contested construction of a sense of ‘community’.