Movie Theaters to Condos: Remembering Toronto’s Greatest Lost Movie Theaters

Will anyone ever build a new movie theater in Toronto again? There’s a credible and depressing argument that when Paradise reopened its doors in late 2019 – after being inactive for 13 years – that moment might have been the very last cinema to open in the city.

If audience behavior has irrevocably shifted over the course of the pandemic, if developers have every incentive to build condos instead of theaters, and if US theater giants file for bankruptcy, there’s ample reason to believe Toronto theaters could be losing and not gaining.

All the more reason for the local audience Appreciate the venues the city now offers — from the justifiably intimidating Ontario Place Cinesphere to the TIFF Bell Lightbox, easily the best place to see a movie in the country — and remember the spaces we once took for granted. To this point, The Globe and Mail asked members of the Canadian film community to remember their lost favorite Toronto cinemas and what we lose when common rooms go dark for the very last time.

Cameron Bailey, executive director of the Toronto International Film Festival

The Euclid existed in a brief moment in the early ’90s that now almost feels like a dream. Before founding Mongrel Media, Hussain Amarshi opened a tiny cinema in a building at College and Euclid. The seats were shabby but the view was brilliant. I did my first film programming in Toronto at Euclid: a film series with actor-singer-activist Paul Robeson and a screening organized by future members of the Black Film and Video Network in honor of pioneering documentary filmmaker Jennifer Hodge da Silva. In 1991, the Inside Out LGBTQ Festival made its debut at the Euclid. Not long after, a Starbucks moved in and the building was converted into condos. The end.

Atom Egoyan, filmmaker (The sweet afterlife, Guest of honor)

The old Cinema Lumiere at College and Spadina was the closest place to watch art films when I went to U of T in the early 80’s. Just below the projection booth was a small unused balcony. It always seemed such a haunted place. I often saw people lurking around up there, but could never find out what they were doing. One night when the lights came on after a performance by Luis Bunuels That obscure object of desire, I noticed a mysterious looking woman sitting alone upstairs. I waited for her to come into the lobby but she never appeared.

Clemens Jungfrau, filmmaker (The Book of Negroes, Brothers)

In the summer of 1984 I went to Uptown 1 on Yonge to see it Purple Rain. The film and Prince fascinated me. After it was over, I went to the bathroom and hid in the cubicle. Then I crept back to the cinema and watched the film again. I must have seen Purple Rain five times this summer at Uptown. My first feature film at the 1995 Toronto Film Festival Not polite had its Canadian premiere at the same theater. I have fond memories of Uptown 1, that long-lost Toronto cinema.

Catherine Hernandez, novelist and screenwriter (Scarborough)

Ha! I laugh at VIP screening rooms with reclining seats and a la carte menus. I’d rather go back in time to the sticky floors of Scarborough’s Cedarbrae 8 Cinema. Just the thought of that low, hopeful cinema brings back the smell of stale popcorn in greasy bags and fresh CK One on the necks of cute boys seated down the aisle. Children today will never know the wonder of sight Jurassic Park‘s CGI for the first time and thought, “How the heck did Spielberg bring dinosaurs back to life?!”

Warren P. Sonoda, National President of the Directors Guild of Canada, filmmakers (Trailer park guys, Cooper’s camera)

For me it was the Cumberland Four in Yorkville because not many filmmakers close a theater in their lifetime. My movie bondage opened April 30th 2012 (an N in NOW Magazine but I swear it was killed in Sudbury!) and then the Cumberland closed on May 6th. I mean, we couldn’t even get a second week (and we should have). I don’t know if our premiere was part of his downfall, but I’ll remember it this way: Writer/producer Michael Sparaga and a handful of cast and crew at the theater wondered if anyone was going to show up, and then saw so many strangers and friends (you know who you are) surround us and make us realize that our journey was the destination and not the destination.

The Cumberland is now a Nespresso boutique and it’s fair to say independent films are harder to see in theaters. Sparaga is shooting an amazing new movie Human, with debut director Caitlin Cronenberg, who hopefully bucks that trend, and I’m showing my latest film, things i do for money at the Westdale in Hamilton on December 16, so closing a theater didn’t end our careers – but I wonder how many careers haven’t started because it’s so difficult to get our stories onto a screen. I hope that the newly formed Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors (NICE) can find some answers for us. The next wave of filmmakers deserve it.

Chandler Levack, filmmaker (i like movies)

If I could go back in time, I’d love to see a movie at the Toronto Underground Cinema again. This gorgeous theater in the basement of a Chinatown mall near Spadina and Dundas was cinephile heaven. I associate the space with the happier days of Torontopia, a time in the city when rents were affordable and people had the energy to make independent art instead of hipster-train-mi-pop-ups. The theater was once an Asian cinema called Golden Harvest specializing in kung fu action films in the 1980s. Former Bloor Cinema executives Nigel Agnew and Alex Woodside (now projectionist at TIFF), along with indie filmmaker Charlie Lawton, rescued the dormant theater for a brief and magical two years between 2010 and 2012.

I’ve seen so many great films in the theater’s vast mauve basement during that small glorious window of time – a perfect 35mm copy of clueless after a summer afternoon at the nearby public pool; my very first experience of seeing John Paizs crime wave, as introduced by the filmmaker himself; a live performance during Nuit Blanche where local indie musicians played Nirvana’s smells like Teen Spirit for 12 hours straight; show girls back to 35mm for the first time. Toronto Underground Cinema abounded in gritty and cult cinematic electricity; it was Toronto’s answer to Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly in Los Angeles. Appropriately, the space is now a church, which at least reflects my feelings at the time.