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AGAINST ALL ODDS:
AGAINST ALL ODDS:

The Swanpool Cinema
The Swanpool Cinema

By Alice Stratton

Since the late 1980s the film This classical thematic styling
exhibition industry has faced continues into the cinema itself. A
competition from home entertainment single screen venue, the entrance is
technology, piracy and the decreasing lined with an aged yet luxuriously thick
window between a films cinema release red velvet curtain that conjures up
and its appearance as a DVD - images of Marilyn Monroe’s infamous
circumstances which resulted in a photo shoot.
reported 14 percent drop in Australian
box office receipts in 2005. The building itself was erected in
Remarkably, the rural town of the mid-1950s when it became the
Swanpool 19km south of Benalla in Swanpool Town Hall. Its very
north-east Victoria, has managed to construction highlights the deeply
sustain its local cinema. A quaint fraternal and community- centred
building situated amongst paddocks, inclinations of the local residents: built
the cinema exists as an anomaly that by voluntary labour with the materials
has achieved a delicate co-dependent used produced and milled locally. The
relationship with its local community. building quickly became the area’s
Upon first entering the foyer of the social epicentre, compensating for the
Swanpool Cinema, one could easily be lack of pubs, cafes and other social
forgiven for thinking that the venue was amenities.
a remarkably preserved time capsule The idea of adapting the hall into a
from the glory days of film exhibition. cinema came in the mid-1980s when
This small room is painted in a film enthusiast Kevin Smith, who had
simple cream base, as to not clash with been involved in film societies,
the vibrant deep red carpet, which is set accepted a work transfer from a
with a pattern of rather theatrical Melbourne branch of the State
swirls. A modest chandelier, clearly Electricity Commission.
designed for aesthetics rather than The seats are a common and Kevin acquired a 1948 Cumming
functionality, hangs from the ceiling. acknowledged source of complaint. and Wilson CP7 35mm projector after a
Homage is paid to the stars of Springs can be felt protruding from metropolitan cinema closed, then stored
classical Hollywood (the likes of a many of the cushions in the most it at his newly purchased country
young Marlon Brando, Greta Garbo inconvenient of places. A gentle property. Soon he wanted to share his
and Marilyn Monroe) through a series warning of this hazard is posted on the love for cinema with the local
of black and white glamour portraits cinema’s website: We are gradually community.
that decorate the back wall of the rebuilding rows to improve the comfort He approached the Town Hall
traditionally styled ticket box. level - our tip Pick your seat carefully, Council with his proposal to screen
some are much more comfortable than films at the hall on weekends, keeping
Below the ticket window rests a
others! it free for community activities during
rather ironic sign: Gentlemen must
wear coats, collars and ties. An authentic cinema organ is the week. The council supported
Considering that the cinema is located directly in front of the screen’s elevated Kevin’s vision, but had doubts that the
in a small farming community, there is stage. Swanpool population could financially
a quietly shared understanding that Surprisingly, most of these relics are sustain a cinema.
visitors are more likely to be wearing decorative donations - not an authentic The council’s lack of faith was
flannelette shirts, and dirty Blunstones. part of the cinema's own history. In evident in the one stipulation they
In the far right corner, a small glass fact, the Swanpool Cinema is still a placed on his access to the space: he
cabinet displays a number of cinematic teen. It recently celebrated its 15th had to return the hall to its original
treasures: old projector bulbs, cover art Birthday. condition when he was ‘done’. Kevin
from films released in the 50s and rolls Shirley Swallow, one of the chuckles at the memory of the
of unused tickets (presumably from a proprietors, smiles at the confusion agreement. “They thought they’d
similar era). regarding the cinema’s age. A gentle humour my dream to ‘play cinema’-
Despite the antiquity of some of the and eloquent woman, she explains that never expecting it to last more than six
items and the buildings proximity to she had wished to cultivate “a certain months”.
several dirt roads, an absence of dust atmosphere of cinema days gone by”.
demonstrates the amount of loving care
involved in preserving these items.

22 2008 CINEMARECORD