Garden City Cinema awaits curtain call – Winnipeg Free Press

The action has yet to be called at Winnipeg's newest movie theater, but anticipation is building.

A single print taped to the dark windows read, “We're hiring!” the announcement is written. at the Garden City Cinema.

The theater hosted movies at the Garden City Mall for 40 years until it closed in August 2010.

According to the ad, the new owners had planned to reopen the doors in March, but those plans have been put on hold.

“I think it's going to be good for business,” said Terrance Fitzner, a waiter at nearby Smitty's.

It is ready to serve moviegoers leaving or entering the reopened theater. Still, Fitzner wasn't sure if he'd be a customer — adding subtitles might be necessary, he joked.

The City of Winnipeg has approved Albion Cinemas, operating as Garden City Cinema, as the new tenant of the single-level mall in 2022.

Albion Cinemas highlights Bollywood movies, shows on its website. Neither he nor Garden City Cinema responded to interview requests by Wednesday's print deadline.

Fitzner often jokes with Sikh and Filipino diners. It would be appropriate to have a multicultural theater in the district, he said.

“Canada has always been a country of immigrants. “I think it's great to give all the people of the country places to interact with their culture,” Fitzner said.

Paz Aquino hopes that Filipino films will also be shown. He goes to Cinema City Northgate to watch movies in Tagalog – less than two kilometers away, but he is at Garden City Mall every day.

“It's about time,” explained Terry Lauranceno, a friend of Aquino's, about the theater's apparent arrival.

Lauranceno's daughter worked at the former Garden City Cinema. At the time, Cineplex operated a two-screen complex.

It was the smallest cinema in the area when it closed in 2010.

While other sites have moved into the stadium, it has retained the old-style sloping floors.

In its later years, the theater played films from India and the Philippines alongside Hollywood films.

Cineplex didn't renew the lease because it didn't fit the company's state-of-the-art facilities, a spokeswoman said. Free press at the same time.

The City of Winnipeg's 2022 permit allowed for new bleacher seating, access ramps, demolition and installation of walls and stairs, among other things.

A year later, in September 2023, Winnipeg greenlit a new permit for kitchen and bathroom renovations.

Brenda Austin-Smith, professor of film and media at the University of Manitoba, thinks a multicultural movie theater in Garden City is smart business.

New movie theater owners are focusing on niche marketing, Austin-Smith added.

“They realized that the mass market was too fragmented. Better yet, “What's the smallest audience in your local area?” to determine the question,” he said.

According to Canada's latest census, 17 percent of Garden City's 6,475 residents spoke Tagalog in 2021. Three percent of the population speaks Punjabi.

According to Austin-Smith, running movie theaters is a “safe” profession in today's movie streaming society. However, Bollywood and Nollywood films – the film hubs based in India and Nigeria respectively – are thriving, he added.

According to Austin-Smith, cinemas have started to take off, have become mass marketable and seem to be going back to being niche.

Companies often need big blockbusters Dune or special films like Bollywood films to attract the masses, he said.

It is not known when Garden City Cinema will begin showing movies.

McCor Management, which runs the Garden City mall, declined to comment.

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Gabriel Piche
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Gabby is a big fan of people, writing and reading. She graduated from Red River College's Creative Communications program in spring 2020.

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