A Film Canon

This used to be a fruit market, at least according to one of my earliest, most fragmented memories of Leichhardt, long before the cultural focus had moved west across Marion Street (that is, long before my incredulity that Norton Street ended in Parramatta Road, that a capillary could drain into an artery). It was the cinema I haunted most when I was a teenager - and a strange teenage haunt, since it's the very definition of tasteful, always maintaing a balance between arthouse and mainstream fare, and far removed from the dank subterranean shudders of Palace Walker Street or the gay holographs of the Palace Verona, synonymous in my mind with parking with my Dad along 'the Wall', and then walking down (but that's for another review). Halfway through a session of High Fidelity here, I started to realise I watched films differently from most other people. I'd obsess over the previews, and then lose interest in the film itself, letting my eye drift up to the corner of the theatre, a space it's never really left. Sometimes I'd blur my eyes so that all I could see was the screen and the exit sign, but, by this time, cinema exits didn't lead anywhere - or, rather, you knew exactly where they led, probably even passed the door outside - and certainly didn't conjure up the cavernous, phantasmic orchestra pits of the George Street multiplex. The only time I took the lift here was to see Dancer In The Dark - and so, in my mind, when Bjork sung "107 Steps", it was like she was doing the climbing for me. I thought that might be the moment when I started enjoying Dogme (the black-screened overture certainly left me nowhere to look but that reclusive corner), but it ended up being the moment I started enjoying Bjork, as the songs from the film started seeping back into my head, days later, while I was gazing down at the bottom of Drummoyne Pool.