Will multi-use theatres become the new small town cinema?
I grew up in West Vancouver. Up until the time I left for university, West Van had two movie theatres operating a total of five cinemas–the Odeon (it had a great marquee) and the Park Royal.
Since the latter closed in 1999, there have been no movie theatres in West Van. If you wanted to see a movie, you had to drive over to North Vancouver.
Recently, the Kay Meek Theatre–a community theatre attached to West Vancouver Secondary School–started showing movies on Monday and Tuesday nights (I previously wrote about the Kay Meek). The films tend to be recent, major independent fare like I Am Love or Exit Through the Gift Shop. I know somebody who works at the Kay Meek, and movie nights are reportedly very well attended.
While up in Sechelt over Christmas, Julie and I were looking for something to do in inclement weather. We discovered that the Raven’s Cry Theatre, a multi-use theatre operated by the Sechelt First Nations band. It’s a charming 274-seat space apparently used for all sorts of events: “plays, concerts, dance and first-run movies”.
For years, the number of cinemas across the country seem to be shrinking, or at least conglomerating into suburban googleplexes. I’ve often wondered, even with digital projection and some flexibility from movie distributors, whether there was a way forward for small towns which have lost their cinema.
This re-purposing of another performance space seems to be the solution. Do you know of other small towns that show movies this way?
I snapped the dodgy photo at the top of this post as we drove past Gibsons Cinema, a 214-seat theatre. Interestingly, it’s housed in a building originally designed by Arthur Erickson.
