Cinema Nova: the heart of Carlton’s film culture

Watching films on a big screen “collides with people’s souls in a way we don’t fully understand,” Cinema Nova CEO Christian Connelly says.

“People go to a movie, they put down their phone, they focus on that massive screen in front of them and … they connect with it.”

Connelly believes a new generation has succumbed to that phenomenon, with the Nova, post-COVID, buoyed by strong patronage from 18- to 35-year-olds.

“It’s been acknowledged recently that that's actually the audience that's sort of lifting cinema out of the doldrums of the last few years,” he says.

“That's the demographic who have actually been rediscovering cinema in a way that people didn't think they would, because it is a generation that's obviously enjoyed streaming for the last 10 years or so.”

The cinema has had recent hits with “young skewing” horror The Obsession, romantic black comedy The Drama and “raggedy” comedy Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, Connelly says.

It is good news for the independent cinema complex, which opened in August 1992 with two cinemas and now boasts 16 of them, of different sizes in a labyrinthine layout.

The venture was set up in the Lygon Court arcade, once the site of Carlton’s alternative theatre the Pram Factory, by former Longford Cinema owner and ACMI founding member Natalie Miller AO – an early champion of foreign films who became the first female film distributor in Australia, together with former Valhalla owner and film director Barry Peak.

A part of the building is heritage protected, Connelly says, because Helen Garner spent time working on her novel Monkey Grip there.

The Nova still features the golden egg-shaped speakers its initial two cinemas were fitted out with and signature purple carpet and walls.

These days there is a licensed bar with a serious wine menu as well as a popcorn and choc-top dispensing snack bar, and a large atmospherically lit area to lounge around in.

On Mondays, the complex goes “insane” with the viewing public taking advantage of $8 movie tickets before 4pm and $11 ones from late afternoon.

Natalie Miller and Barry Peak are both still directors of the company and work with its CEO on programming.

They have avoided “fast money” flicks, Connelly notes.

“We’ve not played a Marvel film or a Star Wars film, I don’t think. We tend to avoid the major franchises.”

The trio are, obviously, “very selective”.

“We take a curatorial approach to what we book,” Connelly says. 

In the process they watch every movie they “bring to the screen”. A lot of time and energy goes into “raising up locally made features and filmmakers and projects”.

The cinema, which come August will be a Melbourne International Film Festival venue, is currently showing an independently made Australian drama about a bisexual, biracial couple who experience “racist-tinged” threats, Connelly says, and recently hosted a Q&A with the filmmaker.

Overall, roughly a quarter of its program is “on the bleeding edge”, according to the CEO – for example, the currently screening surrealist biopic of Czech writer Franz Kafka.

Another quarter is “a little more accessible” – such as films from the French film festival or from US independent arthouse company A24, which produced Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All at Once.

A third quarter is made up of more commercial films, like The Devil Wears Prada and Sheep Detectives, while “repertory and classic films”, such as anniversary and cult screenings – for instance, Friday night disaster classic The Room – make up the rest.

“It's got to be a mix of things that are going to keep people coming through the door, and then while they're in the door, they get exposed to things they might not have previously been aware of,” Connelly says.

The cinema boss loves that he is part of an arts institution that sits in “a wellspring of Australian culture” in Carlton and not only reflects but also helps set the taste for a large slice of Melbourne’s cinema-going public, especially in the city’s north.

He finds it “enormously rewarding” to be involved in continuing to provide a welcoming venue with “an authentic, fun environment” and “more thoughtful films” for people from across the community that is clearly valued not only by the residents of Carlton but by those of the inner north, the City of Melbourne and beyond. •