From Uluru to Oxford Street, filmmaker Lawrence Johnston’s latest film, Night, ventures deep into the core of Australia’s nocturnal soul.

You might think pointing a camera into inky blackness is a foolish pursuit. Documenting the night would make for memorable minutes of nothingness once it hit a similarly inky cinema screen. Sure, there would be occasional entertainment from latecomers tripping on the stairs, but otherwise, nothing, right?

Not so.

Lawrence Johnston took his camera into the wilds of Australia after dark; from Uluru to Brisbane’s Storey Bridge, with notable side trips into the jungles of Kings Cross, Chapel Street and Oxford Street.

Perhaps this is more a document of what can be found when you cast a light into the Australian night. It reveals the nature of life between dusk and dawn – society in all its crazy, beautiful, ugly form.

While Johnston’s camera prowls the streets, Paul Capsis joins other notable Australians who reveal what the night means to them, including dancer David Page, writer Christos Tsiolkas and director Adam Elliot. Horrible, sad, funny, warm – these are stories of everyday emotion that plant our own experiences onto the film.

Johnston’s own unsettling reaction with the night comes from childhood.

“We lived near a refinery and my mother would stand at the window looking at the night sky,” he says. “She was always scared that the lights reflected on the clouds meant there was something wrong. We believed her because she was our mother.”

In making the film, Johnston says he wanted it to be theatrical and entertaining.

“It wouldn’t work as an arty-farty kind of treatise on the night loaded with metaphorical darkness,” he says. “We wanted to make something that was celebratory, beautiful and romantic, because so many things in the world aren’t.”

There’s something Baraka about the lush visuals and rich cinematography. And once you get a copy on DVD, you can always add your own soundtrack for the complete chill-out experience.

While Johnston shows ordinary people going about extraordinary lives under the comfort of night, look closely. Who knows, you might already be there. 

Night is out on February 7.

www.nightthemovie.com