Sydney, Australia: Outdoor Movies at the Bondi Open Air Cinema

Australia's open-air cinema scene revived in the early 2000s, with seasonal venues opening across Sydney and Melbourne. At Bondi, Alexander Khadra-Bosse restored the outdoor amphitheatre in the Bondi Beach pavilion -- left unused for decades -- believing Sydney needed an avant-garde outdoor cinema. “The Bondi Beach area has a lot of young and creative people, artists,” he said. “I felt in Bondi there was an opportunity to mix DJs, local bands and films and make it a sunset film festival.”

Movie-goers arrive in wet bathers straight off the beach and are handed blankets for when the film cools things down. A DJ or band warms up the crowd before the feature. Jaws is a perennial favourite, the salt air off the ocean adding to the suspense. Surf films reliably draw a crowd of regulars. Khadra-Bosse later opened a second outdoor cinema at the sea baths in St Kilda, Melbourne.