Where have all the moviegoers gone?

While movies are as popular as ever, a cultural shift has occurred in how we experience them. Watching movies on DVD, the Internet and iPods has dramatically increased, while attendance at movie theatres and film festivals is down across North America. Dr. Charles Tepperman, film studies professor in the Faculty of Communication and Culture, says new film-viewing technologies mean we are increasingly watching movies in isolation, and this changes our experience and our engagement with the issues movies represent.

"Our emotional and aesthetic experience of a film is heightened when people watch movies together. This contributes to our engagement with the subject matter and with our fellow audience-members," says Tepperman.

He argues that when people experience movies together, they are more likely to have conversations about the issues represented and this can impact public debate.

"This is particularly relevant with movies on pressing current issues, such as Michael Moore's films or An Inconvenient Truth," he says. "People who go out into the world and encounter works about social issues in a public forum are perhaps more likely to engage in the debate and in creating solutions to these problems. When people say the cinema is dying it is because audiences are not having the communal experience we historically associate with it."

One of the challenges of Film Studies lies in tracing the ever-changing significance of motion pictures: movies were the mass art of the 20^th century, but what will they be tomorrow?