Historicist: Life in Wartime
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Every day this week, Torontoist is exploring the future of repertory cinema in Toronto. We spoke to the theatre managers of four major rep cinemas to hear if rep cinema is dying, what it's like to exist in a YouTube society, and what original programming has them most excited. Today, we look at the fall of Festival Cinemas, which sparked fears that rep cinema would disappear from the city.
In 2006, the future of repertory cinema in Toronto was bleak. Festival Cinemas, the largest chain of rep theatres in the city, shut down in the summer and announced the closure of five theatres: the Kingsway, the Paradise, the Revue, the Fox, and the Royal. (Rep theatre closures were not exclusive to Toronto. In 2006, Montreal’s last English-language rep, Cinéma du Parc, also closed.) To add salt to the wound, the Bloor Cinema (which had broken off from Festival Cinemas in 1999) was plagued with rumours that it was in poor financial shape, exacerbated by repair costs for a collapsed roof in 2004. As a whole, the movie exhibition industry—first-run and rep—was facing a problem: attendance from 2002 to 2005 had dropped 16% from 125.7 million tickets sold down to 105.2 million.
Many reasons were attributed to the downturn of repertory cinema in Toronto, but the most popular was that audiences were still watching movies, but from the comfort of home. DVDs had supplanted the two traditional repertory cinema markets: artier fare, such as independent, foreign, and classic films, and second-run films. The widespread availability of DVDs gave people greater accessibility to the former, while distributors began closing the window between a film’s theatrical and DVD release and cut into business for the latter.
Home theatre technology wouldn’t make rep cinemas redundant though. "Rep cinemas have a cultural function and an aesthetic function, and play an invaluable service to sustaining a strong film culture in Toronto," says Charlie Keil, program director of Film Studies at the University of Toronto. Keil believes film watching is enhanced by the venue: “To watch a film in an older theatre is a unique and personal experience; there’s a history that can inform the experience,” he says.
The history is about to be added to, as the passion for the rep theatre experience has fuelled the return of three former Festival Cinemas theatres. The Royal was bought by Theatre D Digital to be used primarily as a digital production facility, but shows films at night; the Revue was revived by community members in Roncesvalles after an arduous fundraising campaign; and, in the Beaches, the Fox reopened renovated—including a change in management. Meanwhile, the Bloor has stayed open, defiant to any whispers that claim it’ll close any day now.
Photo by mdintoronto from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Repertory cinemas are also important to the dozens of smaller film festivals (basically, everyone OTHER than TIFF) that proliferate in this town. As someone who's been kicking around the festival world for a while, I remember that the 2006 closures certainly sent a lot of us scrambling.
You might want to check your information, I believe that Theatre D purchased the Regent Theatre on Mount Pleasant, not The Royal Cinema on College.
I definitely agree that Rep Cinemas are essential to the culture of film and the film festival.
Long live Rep Cinema in Toronto !!!
Hello Digits,
Theatre D Digital owns both the Regent and the Royal. You can read more here.
Cheers, Jaime
I really wish Theatre D would put a show schedule online. I used to go to the Royal every couple of weeks, but I've only been once in the last 5 months (for Heima, the Sigur Ros rockdoc) because I don't know what's playing and I'm not going to walk down there just to see.
It's no substitute for a proper website, but the Royal does post its schedule to its Myspace page and Facebook group. I recommend joining the Facebook group, as they often send out invites and reminders, which I find to be the best way to keep up on their programming.
You might want to check your information. The Fox theatre never closed, except for a month last fall when it changed ownership. I believe it's the oldest continuously operating movie theatre in Canada. Since they reopened they've raised prices a bit and added more interesting movies to the mix.
I think part of the reason for the decline was that at the end the Festival theatres mostly played second run Hollywood garbage, not the mix of classic, cult, and second run movies that they used to show in the 80s and early 90s. That's why I stopped going.
Hi Person Man,
I should clarify: There was talk that the Fox would close with the other four Festival Cinemas theatres also closing. The Fox ended up staying open, but did close (as you note) to change management to Andy Willick and Daniel Demois and perform renovations. In the end, Festival Cinemas and its relationship with any of the theatres as we know it are over.
Cheers, Jaime
Thanks for the link to the other article regarding the Royal Cinema, I did not know that Theatre D was the current lease holder.
The second article did bring up another point though, that Projectionists in this city should get their act together, obviously not all are bad, but I have sat through quite a number of films in recent years in both multiplex and rep cinemas, with focus issues, and or framing issues.
Thanks for the link to the other article regarding the Royal Cinema, I did not know that Theatre D was the current lease holder.
The second article did bring up another point though, that Projectionists in this city should get their act together, obviously not all are bad, but I have sat through quite a number of films in recent years in both multiplex and rep cinemas, with focus issues, and or framing issues.