Other places of note even closer by include Victoria's biggest used bookstore, just around the corner on Elgin Street (where the map says Percy's Bar & Bistro) and the Nova Cinema (south another block on Lygon Street), whose fifteen screens show everything you could possibly want to see. You'll notice that that stretch of Lygon Street has broad sidewalks - it's back to back cafes and restaurants, most of them Italian (this was once Melbourne's Little Italy), along with the Readings bookstore and its multinational rival with the facetious name Borders. Downtown (the CBD) is about five minutes' ride by tram (the dotted red lines) to the south.Speaking of the Nova, I saw a superb film there yesterday, Rolf de Heer's "Ten Canoes," developed and performed by members of the Ramingining community, Aborigines from Arnhem Land in the swampy north of Australia. The story is narrated by the eponymous Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, and while addressed to a European audience uncompromisingly presents an Aboriginal story, which grows like a tree outward and not just towards a climax, all played in an unspoiled Australia on which Europeans might never have set foot.
Part of what makes the film so effective is the way de Heer uses specifically cinematic effects, fading in and out of black and white, extreme closeups which look like photographs (even, sometimes, European ethnographic photographs from the 19th century), etc. to underscore the weave of the narrative."Ten Canoes" has only recently come out here, so may take a while coming to a cinema near you (it won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes this year, so it will come) but when it does - go see it!
