Let down by Dendy.

My passion is film, and, usually without exception, it is the films that are made outside the money-driven Hollywood system that I have the most interest in. There is a lot of great, innovative cinema coming from Europe, England, (non-Hollywood) United States, and elsewhere - and these are the films that I and others with similar interests want to see.

Understandably, Canberra is probably only big enough for one major 'arthouse' cinema, and for years, that mantle was held by Electric Shadows. In late 2006, however, they were bought out by the generally well-respected Dendy corporation, the self-proclaimed 'home of quality cinema' with a reputation for showing the films you couldn't see at Hoyts and Greater Union. Even so, I understood that, being a bigger business than the local complex had been, Dendy probably had to supplement its foreign and independent fare with one or two Hollywood blockbusters from time to time, and at first they did just that.

But how far they've fallen. In the previous week, 12 films were screened at Dendy Canberra, and nine of those 12 were regulation Hollywood movies. All 9 will probably play at every Hoyts cinema in Australia (to break it down: 'event' movies Sex and the City, Prince Caspian and Indiana Jones; blockbuster superhero movies Hancock, The Dark Knight and The Incredible Hulk; kids movie Kung Fu Panda; M. Night Shyamalan thriller The Happening; and of course Get Smart). The three others are British indie flick Happy-Go-Lucky, German Academy Award winner for best foreign feature The Counterfeiters and Russian-produced historical epic Mongol.

This is really, really disappointing. What with the latest Cannes Film Festival finishing only recently, and a swathe of new titles from respected arthouse directors, there are far more than three new worthwhile films out there - where are people with genuine interest in film supposed to go? (At this point I should mention the wonderful Arc cinema at the National Film and Sound Archive, but they're solely devoted to screening classics of 30-year vintage or whatever - which is fantastic, but you most certainly won't be able to see newer films there).

This does seem to be a Canberra-specific thing - the other Australian Dendy complexes still seem to have a specific orientation towards, well, 'quality cinema', but Canberra seem all but ready to ditch any pretense towards that whatsoever. And for me, that sucks.