Melbourne: city of the imagination

Melbourne has been a relatively ubiquitous presence in the cinema since the very first films shot by a Lumière cameraman in Australia in late 1896. These initial Australian films feature iconic (Derby Day, part of the Melbourne Cup Carnival) and relatively indistinct images of the city that set up a paradigm for Melbourne's representation that continues to this day. This combination of iconic identifiability - determined by such elements as Melbourne's seeming obsession with sport and the 'marvellous' Victorian-era architecture that defines the city's popular identity - and indistinctiveness is reflective of the city's geography, history, cultural identity, and insistent competitive relationship to the more obviously spectacular and picturesque Sydney. Melbourne, arguably defined as a 'second city' in contradistinction to its northern counterpart, is often considered more cultured, more literary, more liveable (the 'world's most' according to various highly publicised polls), more structured (it served as Australia's administrative capital and parliament in the early years after Federation), less brash, and as a place that you must spend time in to truly experience. Melbourne-set films, complete with the difficulties they encounter in introducing the city and finding easy markers of identification, are defined by a dispersed and piecemeal psycho-geography of the city.