Pivotonian Cinema

Jessica Litsas and Mark Walker are bringing life to an old idea, with their independent cinema officially open for a pop up Summer season at the Ukrainian Hall on Pakington St. Amidst organising their program launch, and hanging of the screen, I had the chance to sit down with the pair for a much needed coffee break.
“We feel like we’re doing the work of about a dozen people at the moment,” Jess adds with a nervous laugh.
And they pretty much are. From concept to completion, every aspect of the cinema has been created by Jess and Mark – minus the design of posters and the website – and it seems they are the best two people to get it done.
“I’ve worked in cinemas for about 18 years, in addition to being technical coordinator at Lorne I’m also technical coordinator at Melbourne International Film Festival,” Mark says. Paired with his experience also working at independent cinemas like the Sun in Yarraville, and Jess’ work also at MIFF and in arts management, the cinema is bound to be a sure fire success.
With their experience they realise even the best of ideas need a trial period. At this stage the Pivotonian Cinema will be a pop up cinema, but if all goes well it will become a permanent attraction for the bustling Geelong West street. “The whole point of the pop up is testing everything and seeing how it goes, and if something doesn’t work we’ll make some changes,” Jess says.
“If it’s popular we’ll return to the same venue. Ideally we’d do the pop up and go permanent, but more realistically we’ll do the pop up there and then a pop up again next year, and hopefully at the end of next year we’ll be in a position where we can go permanent,” Mark says.
The final goal is to one day have a functioning cinema like the Sun Theatre, with multiple screens set up to run simultaneous sessions. For now, however, the cinema will function on the one screen with the program officially launched on November 7.
This pop up season sees films like Nightcrawler (with Jake Gyllenhaal), What We Do In The Shadows and BLANK gracing the screens and entertaining locals. There’s even a Ukrainian Film Festival in early January as a thank you to their venue owners. “We came into the venue and were like okay, it’s the Ukrainian Hall, we want to do something to engage with that community as well,” Mark says.
“It’s a great venue and they’re letting us take over it for eight months so that’s huge,” Jess says.
When programming the films, which are from suppliers Madmen, Umbrella and Pinnacle, it would be easy to fall into selecting movies you like, though the pair have consciously been thinking of others throughout the whole process. The decision to have the Ukrainian Film Festival is just one example of this.
“We’ve broken it down into five categories – or five audience categories – so we’re going for kids and families, older generation, art-house for the film buff crew and a bit more of a mainstream thing for people that like their light and fun movies instead of the dark and heavy stuff,” Jess says before Mark quick adds: “And foreign as well.”
“I think one of the first things when you’re programming films is you’re not programming things for yourself,” Mark says.
And the attention to detail doesn’t just stop there, as the pair have created a unique nostalgic experience that pays homage to the good old days of going to the cinema. With 90 seats – consisting of 70 lawn chairs, 10 banana lounges and 10 bean bags – choc tops, popcorn and other traditional snacks, the Pivotonian is also about the experience of watching a film.
Another thing they’ve looked at is the affordability of a night out. Instead of paying upwards of $20 for a chance to sit down at the latest independent movies, their cinema will be an affordable night out – with families clearly in mind.
“That’s another thing for us, we want to have the tickets low so more people can come and really get good value for money,” Mark says. With well-priced tickets and an overall experience created by the pair, all that’s left is for an audience to come and enjoy it. If the Pivotonian is ever to become a long term thing on Pakington St, they simply need your support.
“I suppose that’s it. We really need the community support and for people to come and see the films to show us that there is the demand for us to expand. If no one comes we can’t expand because we’ll have no audience to cater to,” Jess says.
The official opening night for the cinema will be on November 27 with a screening of the no turning back drama, Locke starring Tom Hardy. To find out more or to purchase tickets visit pivotcinema.com.au or facebook.com/pivotcinema.
When&Where: Located at the Ukrainian Community Hall, 57 Pakington Street with various dates throughout summer.
By Amanda Sherring