Women’s Memories of Cinema-Going: More than ‘The Only Thing Left to do’ in Victoria’s Western District

Abstract

This article uses women’s memories of rural cinema-going in the Western District of Victoria to explore the role of cinema as both a physical site of entertainment and as a personal site of memory. Not only do these stories reveal the accessible nature of film as entertainment, but they also allow insights into the social constructions of gender, social class and narratives of growing-up. The primary evidence is from an oral history project, based on the theme of entertainment, which was conducted in the early 1980s with subjects born around the turn of the twentieth century. This article has been peer reviewed.