I’m standing in the projection room of The Revue Cinema, one of the oldest theatre companies in the city. It’s a small, narrow space, almost entirely consumed by three hulking projectors. A glass window affords a steep view of the theatre below, which, in several hours, will be darkened for the evening’s screening.
Andy Willick, one of the managers of the theatre, gestures to two metal cases on the floor, in which are stored reels of 35 mm film.
“Try to lift the left can,” he says.
I grab the handle of the can and pull. I can barely get it off the ground.
Willick laughs. “That’s one movie, those two cans,” he says. “On a busy week, we could be changing movies every two days. That means assembling and disassembling reels for two movies every two days. It’s a lot of work to be doing that.”
He tells me that The Revue only uses reels of 35 mm film, where as most other cinemas in the city have increasingly been screening movies using digital hard drives. This change to digital minimizes the amount of time and effort involved in screening an individual movie and, as Willick points out, eliminates the need to lug around heavy cans of film.
“[The hard drive] comes in a little case,” Willick says, and then pauses. “It’s really odd.”
While the switch to digital projection certainly has its benefits, as I talk to Willick, I get the sense that The Revue has been caught up in the whirlwind of new technology that is forever changing the world of cinema. By the middle of the summer, almost all the theatres in Canada (the majority of which are owned by Cineplex) will have made the transition to digital projection systems. Much of the 35 mm film stores will eventually be thrown away, essentially forcing independent theatres like The Revue to make the rather expensive leap to digital projection.
“If I’m trying to book a print here for a title, if there’s not demand for it in 35 [mm] … there’s going to be no way for me to get a print, so I won’t have anything to play,” Willick says. “So the challenge here is going to be … raising the money to digitize.”
Although The Revue is being propelled into the digital age by the multiplex powers that be, the company is determined to maintain the unique programming that has made the theatre a beloved feature of the Roncesvalles neighbourhood. A not-for-profit repertory cinema, The Revue screens second-run films at discounted prices and hosts a variety of events featuring a less mainstream lineup of movies, from the classics to genre films to documentaries. About once a month, for example, The Revue screens a silent film, accompanied by a live piano player. As part of their “Book Revue” program, the cinema screens film adaptations of books and hosts a discussion about the movie. The list goes on.
I ask Willick to describe the process involved in selecting the films that will be included in its special programs.
“It’s based on people showing interest in particular areas,” he tells me. “Sometimes, we find someone in the community who has [a particular] expertise. We just played the Scarlet Empress [a historical drama about Catherine the Great] because someone who lived in the neighbourhood wrote a book about Catherine the Great. So she did a lecture … and we watched the movie.”
Above all, The Revue’s special programs are created with the intention of turning the theatre into a space that fosters a sense of community among its patrons.
“[A local theatre] is a gathering place. It’s a place where people are meant to come together,” Willick says. “I think what we’re trying to do with some of the special events is to enhance the experience beyond just watching a movie.”
At the moment, The Revue is faced with the challenge of sustaining the repertory lineup that makes the theatre so dear to its patrons. The Revue is essentially stuck in a cinematic limbo, as 35 mm prints of new and old films alike are becoming obsolete, but the theatre cannot yet afford to install a digital projection system.
“Right now we’re in a weird transition time,” Willick tells me. “There’s going to be a gap between having digital copies of rep stuff and when … we have a good digital catalogue.”
A few weeks prior to interviewing Willick, I stopped by what was formerly known as the Bloor Cinema in the Annex. The theatre recently made the switch to a digital projection system, along with a slew of other upgrades and renovations that required the cinema to temporarily close its doors. A repertory theatre like The Revue, the Bloor had been struggling for its survival for some time, and its owners were forced to sell the lease of the property. The documentary festival Hot Docs and the investment company Blue Ice Group purchased the theatre and financed its renovations. Nine months later, the Bloor was reborn as the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.
I sat next to Robin Smith, the Bloor’s programmer, in one of the soft seats of the theatre’s new interior. The changes to the space are subtle. The new digital projector is also refurbished with 35 mm capabilities, so the theatre can play almost any format aside from 3D. A new Dolby sound system was installed and the screen was moved forward and raised higher, allowing people on the balcony to get a good view of the movie. A large, crisp, glass panel now looks out onto the lobby, but it is covered with a curtain while the films are playing.
“Everyone realized that people love this cinema for what it was and its history,” Smith told me. “It was really important that we didn’t alienate the audiences that used to populate the Bloor by radically changing it… [The theatre] needed that face lift, it just needed some money to put behind it.”
But the Bloor did have to undergo some significant changes in order to stay afloat amidst the sea of multiplexes in the city. Because the theatre is now being financed by Hot Docs, it has moved away from its repertory program, and the second-run fiction and genre films that made the Bloor a hub for Annex cinephiles are, for the most part, being replaced by documentaries.
“Any business … is only as good as servicing the immediate needs of [its] neighbourhood,” Smith said. “They were very smart, back in the day, about knowing what people lived and ate and breathed in the Annex… We want to do something similar, although we’re going to be primarily documentary-focused.”
I asked Smith if he thought the shift to a documentary-heavy program would lead to a change in the makeup of the audiences that come to the cinema.
“Probably,” he replied. “Documentary audiences … skew a little older than the genre fans that used to come to the Bloor… I think we’ll probably have a lot of people who attended Hot Docs coming here to taste it out and see what it’s like.”
For now, the Bloor is simply trying to strike a balance between the target audience of the company supporting its existence and the long-time patrons of the theatre, who might feel put off by its new program.
“There’s no harm in us adding more shows if we’re successful with something, or creating a new strand of programming if there’s a demo that feels like the program isn’t really catching them here,” Smith says. “Best case scenario, I’ll see some of the faces that I used to see when I came here to the Bloor, but I’ll also see some new faces … Time will tell.”
