CINÉMA MODERNE: CITY’S FIRST CAFÉ-BAR-MOVIE THEATRE
Venue personalizes movie experience with varied programming, special guests, drinks
“Gin tonic & cinema,” read the post on filmmaker Frédérick Pelletier’s Facebook page, Wednesday evening, accompanying a photo of the drink in question resting atop a ticket to a film at our city’s hippest (and smallest?) new movie theatre, Cinéma Moderne.
Montreal joined the global filmgoing revolution on Monday with the opening of the unique new Mile End hot spot located on St. Laurent Blvd. just north of Laurier Ave.
With an intimate café-bar up front, and a state-of-the-art 54-seat theatre in the back, Cinéma Moderne is already changing the way Montrealers watch movies.
Yes, you can bring your drink inside.
“We wanted to create an environment where people can meet and socialize, that is more festive than a regular theatre,” said Roxanne Sayegh, who spent months negotiating the required permits.
“People can have a coffee or a drink before, watch a movie, come out and have a drink and a bite,” added fellow co-owner Alexandre Domingue.
Buzz has been circulating through the city’s film and cultural scene for months, while Sayegh and Domingue toiled away, getting everything just right.
There is goodwill galore surrounding their project. She is the former head of Montreal’s premier documentary film festival, RIDM; he runs Post_Moderne, the post-production studio located upstairs, where 35 Quebec fiction features and 40 documentaries, big and small, are edited each year. In other words, they have contacts all over town.
Denis Villeneuve, who has finished several of his movies at Post_Moderne, will bless the place with his presence, introducing a sold-out screening of his film Blade Runner 2049 on Sunday evening.
It’s sure to be an optimal viewing experience on the theatre’s 4K laser phosphor projector and 32-speaker, three-dimensional Dolby Atmos sound system.
“It’s the most up-to-date (system available),” Domingue enthused, and he would know. “It can play 5.1, 7.1, 12.2, IMAX ...”
In the daytime, the theatre can be rented by Post_Moderne clients for colour correction. Tuesday evening, a local film company reserved the room for a private screening at 7 p.m.; then a public screening followed at 9 while film company’s guests feted it up at the bar.
“There are two concrete walls for sound insulation,” Domingue explained, sitting in the theatre with Sayegh. “It’s like a cocoon in here. You can have 55 people at the bar and, listen — all you hear (in the theatre) is the lights.”
“We really wanted optimal quality for the projections,” Sayegh said. “With Netflix and all the other platforms available, there’s the question of how to get people out. It’s not easy.”
Technical specs aside, Cinéma Moderne’s answer is to personalize the movie-going experience with special guests, sharp and varied programming (16 different films are on the menu this week, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Quebec director Maxime Giroux’s new film La Grande Noirceur, the theatre’s first sold-out screening), and of course, drinks.
“It changes the experience a lot,” Sayegh said. “There are so many theatres in Europe where you can have a drink and it’s normal. Here it feels like a big deal.”
The pair researched newschool movie theatres in Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, New York and Mexico City, while keeping in mind the distinct flavour of Montreal.
Our city’s veteran cinephiles may be reminded of Claude Chamberlan’s similarly themed Cinéma Parallèle, from back in the day, which got absorbed into the ill-fated Excentris.
Cinéma Moderne’s arrival comes a week before the opening of the Musée des beaux arts’s Cinéma du musée, on Wednesday — the confluence pointing to something of a Montreal movietheatre renaissance.
“I hope it’s the beginning of a series (of theatres),” Sayegh said. “There are other neighbourhoods — we’re answering a need in Mile End, which is a crazy creative hub. There was a real lack of theatres in Montreal.”
While they have other wild ideas, the two are taking a moment to savour their accomplishment.
“It’s wonderful,” Sayegh said. “I can’t believe we did this. It’s really incredible, it’s awesome, to go from a dream to reality. Our payoff is seeing the smiles on people’s faces; the enthusiasm of people walking by, saying, ‘I’m coming back tomorrow.’ ”
Once they prove themselves, they hope to secure financial backing to ensure the longevity and evolution of their initiative.
“This isn’t like the Phi Centre or Excentris, with a philanthropist millionaire behind it,” Sayegh said. “We don’t want to depend only on ticket sales. We need the support of government. In Toronto, there is all kinds of philanthropy around cinema, which Montreal is missing.
“Now that this exists, it will be easier to approach people.”