Catch a flight — and a flick
More airports are adding movie theaters,
Hooray for Hollywood! That’s what passengers at Oregon’s Portland International Airport (PDX) were saying even before February’s official opening of the free microcinema on Concourse C.
A branch of the city’s historic Hollywood Theatre movie palace, the new Hollywood Theatre at PDX, has a bright, 1920s-inspired neon marquee, seating for 17 ( but capacity for 49) and a $200,000 state-of-the-art projection and sound system isolated from the roar of the planes and the shaking of the airport building.
The cinema replaces a rarely used post-security service center. Instead of sitting at work tables with power outlets, passengers can use this space to watch an hour-long reel of G-rated short films by Oregon filmmakers that will run around the clock and be refreshed quarterly.
The opening program reel includes the premiere of an animated film, a music video, a documentary, mini-shorts about Portland by local film students and more than a half-dozen other features.
“And the airport theater isn’t just for travelers,” said Doug Whyte, executive director of the Hollywood Theatre. “We expect many people who work at the airport to use it, too.”
The PDX airport cinema was in production for more than three years.
Whyte said his team plans special programming that might bring visiting filmmakers to the concourse during film festivals and special events such as silent film shorts accompanied by live music.
“I’d say we have a blockbuster here,” said Vince Granato, chief operating officer of the Port of Portland, which operates the PDX airport. “We want to make sure a passenger’s entire journey — from the roadway to the run- way — is great.”
Portland International isn’t the only airport to offer movies to passengers who have a bit of extra time to spend.
In 2014, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport opened its “See 18” Screening Room near Gate C18 to show short films, documentaries, music videos and art programming by Minnesota filmmakers and shot predominantly in Minnesota.
The theater area seats 150 and features an eight-screen display arrangement that can be reconfigured to allow for art exhibitions, literary readings and other events, said Robyn Robinson, arts and culture director of the Airport Foundation MSP.
All films are less than 10 minutes, run 24/7, are curated by the Film Society of Minneapolis-St. Paul and are refreshed three times a year.
Farther afield, Singapore’s Changi Airport has two 24-hour movies theaters (in Terminals 2 and 3) offering free screenings of full-length movies for passengers.
The lineup includes Star Trek Beyond, Keeping Up With the Jones
es and Kubo and the Two Strings. There are movie theaters selling tickets to recent films in the public areas of Hong Kong International Airport, South Korea’s Incheon Airport and a few others.
Lithuania’s Vilnius Airport promotes its free cinema hall showing work by Lithuanian filmmakers, and there’s a Cinema Time screening room showing a wide variety of free films at the Vaclav Havel Prague Airport.
“Besides airport gardens, parks, gyms, yoga rooms, a cinema — especially one that screens local movies — is a nice way to kill time,” said Raymond Kollau, founder of AirlineTrends. “You might even take a nap in a comfortable cinema chair, should the movie not be too engaging.”
On the other hand, there could be trouble at the airport if the movies shown are way too engrossing.
“The danger, curiously, is that a too-successful airport movie theater will keep passengers from making their flights on time and will detain airline employees when they should be issuing boarding passes or de-icing planes,” said Christopher Schaberg, the author of several books about airports, including the forthcoming Airportness: The Nature of Flight.