The Tivoli Theatre and its owner, Bonnie Geddes, are among those featured in a new documentary movie celebrating the survival of small-town movie theatres in British Columbia.
Documentary makers Curtis and Silmara Emde took on the project after noticing that many of Vancouver’s vintage cinemas were closing for good. Curtis grew up in Vernon and describes the Towne Theatre as his “childhood movie house.”
For Curits and many of his generation, and earlier ones, the independent single-screen local theatre was part of community life, even as they struggled with competition from television and the advent of VHS rental movies.
Out of the Interior: Survival of the Small-town Cinema in British Columbia documents the efforts of the theatre operators to keep their businesses viable.
When Curtis and Silmara took a winter road trip to visit movie theatres in the BC Interior they got a pleasant surprise.
“These weren’t former cinemas now gutted and functioning as Bingo halls or turned into churches, these were contemporary businesses showing the latest Hollywood movies,” Curtis said. “From the Golden Cinema at the foothills of the Rockies to the Gem Theatre in Boundary Country – each discovery raised our curiosity. It seems that something beyond the switch to digital projection was keeping these cinemas of the Southern Interior going. But what, exactly?”
To find out, they returned to the region six months later, for the first of several trips they’d take through the Kootenay, Okanagan, Boundary, Columbia Valley and Shuswap regions to make a documentary that would seek to answer some key questions: what makes cinemas in smaller communities succeed? And how fragile is this success, given that several of these theatres of the interior are currently for sale?
“There’s nothing like being able to visit one’s hometown and still be able to buy a ticket and see a movie at the theatre one went to as a child,” Curtis said. “The experience is rich in nostalgia, but the theatres aren’t museums: they’re modern places of employment. And the stories of those employed there, as told to us in lobbies, concession areas, auditoriums and projection booths throughout the Southern Interior, are personal and unvarnished; often celebratory, frequently funny, sometimes sad – but are always real, and always rooted in the community.”
With its art deco architecture and a committed owner, Creston’s Tivoli Theatre is a prime example of what the Emdes were looking for in their feature-length documentary.
“We are pleased to announce that Out of the Interior will be screened at the Tivoli itself on Thursday, May 3rd at 5 pm. Silmara and I will be there to introduce the doc, as well as to take part in a Q&A afterwards.”