Spokane’s 21st Century Fox
2008 · 56m · Documentary
Opened in 1931, Spokane’s Fox Theater was the place to go, with a line around the block to view the latest Hollywood feature, usherettes in evening gowns, and famous performers on stage. After years of decline as a discount theater, the Fox was threatened with demolition in 2000 - until the community rallied to save it.
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Marqueetown
2024
Through booms and busts, Delft Theatres and its innovative gem The Nordic endured in Marquette, Michigan for almost 100 years. Bernie Rosendahl’s crusade to restore the historic arthouse to its former glory reveals a hidden cinema empire in the Upper Peninsula.
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At the Drive-In
2017 · ★ 7.3
Unable to purchase a $50,000 digital projector, a group of film fanatics in rural Pennsylvania fight to keep a dying drive-in theater alive by screening only vintage 35mm film prints and working entirely for free.
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Memoirs of a Movie Palace: The Kings of Flatbush
1980
When Brooklyn's Kings Theater -- one of five "Wonder Theaters" in the New York area -- closed its doors in 1977, the neighborhood mourned. In a series of interviews, local aficionados of the palace as well as its projectionist, its organist, and former employees, reminisce about the Kings and its charmed days gone by.
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Scala!!!
2024 · ★ 7.8
This feature-length big screen documentary tells the riotous inside story of the infamous sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll repertory cinema which inspired a generation during Britain's turbulent Thatcher years.
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Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace
2019 · ★ 6.3
Celebrating the splendor and grandeur of the great cinemas of the United States, built when movies were the acme of entertainment and the stories were larger than life, as were the venues designed to show them. The film also tracks the eventual decline of the palaces, through to today’s current preservation efforts. A tribute to America’s great art form and the great monuments created for audiences to enjoy them in.
More info →La Caissière fait son cinéma
1997
Paris, Latin Quarter. A small cinema that is both famous and marginal, Action Christine. The cashier has taken her camcorder and takes us to this public place, her workplace. Place of life, of passage, of meeting, a window open on the street, behind the hygienic phone, it is the daily life of the cashiers and the openers punctuated by the alternation of surging entrances and idle intersession.
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Under the Stars
2022 · ★ 5.8
Paying tribute to some of America's only surviving drive-ins – and those who keep them running – this heartfelt documentary captures efforts to preserve these nostalgic theaters in small-towns across the country.
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Ghosts Behind the Screen
2017 · ★ 7
In the excitement of the roaring 20s, a new kind of movie palace was constructed by the Bay. More than 90 years later, Tampa Theatre has become known as one of the most haunted buildings in the city, This Documentary uncovers the rich history and explores the unexplained events with a Team of Historians, Ghost Hunters and Staff.
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Your Cinema Needs You
2023
Your Cinema Needs You traces the origins of the Monarch Theatre, the rise and fall of its direct competitors, and its evolution in becoming Canada's oldest, surviving cinema since it first opened its doors on December 21, 1911.
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Palace of Silents
2010 · ★ 6.4
Built in 1942 by a maverick film preservationist, this small Los Angeles theater championed silent film at the very moment when the Hollywood studios across town were busily destroying their nitrate inventories. With hard chairs, phonograph-record accompaniments, and mostly original vintage prints, the dingy mom-and-pop operation was nonetheless a palace to the fanatical few who became its loyal audience.
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Movie Showman
1989 · ★ 10
This short film portrays the NFB's itinerant projectionists during the '40s and early '50s who travelled throughout Canada, bringing films and discussions to rural communities. The film uses a mix of dramatic re-enactments with archival footage and interviews with veterans of the movie circuit to shed light on an important period in Canadian film history.
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