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 centres and their smallest improvised counterparts in remote settlements.

Karina Aveyard is a lecturer in the School of Art, Media and American Studies at the University of East Anglia and an adjunct research fellow at Griffith University. Her research interests include film exhibition and distribution, audiences and cultural geography.