Lure of the Big Screen

Cinema in Rural Australia and the United Kingdom

Lure of the Big Screen explores film exhibition and consumption in rural parts of the UK and Australia, where film theatres are often highly valued as spaces around which isolated communities can gather and interact. Going beyond national borders, this book examines how theatres in areas of social and economic decline are sustained by resourceful individuals and sub-commercial operating structures. Systematic analysis of cinemas in non-metropolitan locations has yielded an original five-tiered clustering model through which Karina Aveyard recognizes a range of types between large commercial multiplexes in stable regional centers and their smallest improvised counterparts in remote settlements.