Free Twilight movie

By Madeleine Murray

WE LIVE in a beautiful part of the world, the Tweed Shire, with its rivers, mountains, mist, rainforest and beaches.

We are also lucky to have a proactive Tweed Shire Council who recently opened a popular bike trail, provides nests for ospreys and are now putting on free twilight movies.

The smash hit film Minions – The Rise of Gru will screen outdoors on Friday, April 14, from 7.30pm at Jack Evans Boat Harbour.

The Rise of Gru is the unlikely story of one twelve-year-old’s dream to become the world’s greatest supervillain.

Gather your friends and family, some chairs, picnic blankets and snacks, and head over to the beautiful, family-friendly Jack Evans Boat Harbour.

“We are thrilled to be bringing another movie screening to Jack Evans Boat Harbour, especially when our first planned movie night in January was called off at the last minute due to stormy weather conditions,” Tweed Shire

Mayor Chris Cherry told The Weekly.

“The Places to Love initiative has a vision to provide an inclusive public place that connects people to open spaces. We want people to feel welcome not only during the day but also at night.”

There will be street food and live music at the nearby Tweed Night Markets from 5pm to 8pm as well.

“By activating open spaces, we hope to provide an opportunity for the community to come together, to connect with one another, and to feel pride in where they live,” Cr Cherry said.

“The community has embraced using Jack Evans Boat Harbour in this new way and it has given us ideas on what residents want with the space into the future.”

It sounds like a great evening — a chance to get out and about instead of sitting on the couch at home watching TV or playing video games.

The Places to Love program is funded by Transport for NSW, with the community encouraged to take public transport or walk, ride, skate or scoot to the precinct.

Happy Easter holidays to everyone, full of fun, family time. It’s all about the kids with a magical movie menu for our local single-screen cinema this fortnight. The big studios are strict about their policies, so The Regent is beholden to three daily screenings for Super Mario Bros, and twice daily for Dungeons and Dragons for this first week, leaving little room for anything else – except for some late-night Horror movies on Friday and Saturday nights. With robust data from Avatar 2 that roughly the same total audience size will attend on a particular day, regardless of the number of screenings, this proves that their multipletimes-a-day policy only serves to cripple the few remaining independent cinemas. It’s interesting that the independent studios are generally more flexible with these rules, and willing to negotiate in order for their film to be seen. There is a feeling of camaraderie and a gratitude for showing the film, helping to extend their outreach. People are also content to wait a few weeks until the sub-run can be shown, without the policy problem. But the blockbusters, with their massive marketing campaigns, and fans clambering to catch them as soon as they’re released, with their studios raking in maximum profits, staying staunch in their take-it-or-leaveit offers. The sense prevailing in these exchanges is that our locally-significant Regent cinema is small fry, and won’t add much to their bottom line anyway. These studios have the ultimate power and wield it without much consideration for the fallout for the broader, or local, industries. Many of these we indeed pass over, relenting that if we don’t take it straight away, and play it several times a day (thereby drastically cutting other curated content) it’s not worth having it over a month later, as most people would have already seen it. If it’s a flop, then it may even be on streaming by then, something which is not made transparent when we book the film, unless asked directly. There’s nothing quite like going out to the movies, and a sensory bigscreen experience…so please, support your local Indy cinema.