A screening of Tomcat: Dangerous Desires at Eyesore Cinema, on June 13.Mike Wood/Supplied
Mike Wood remembers the first time that he walked into a micro-cinema. Raised in the east-end Toronto neighbourhood of Cabbagetown, the cinephile and film programmer first visited Cine-Cycle as a teenager. Operating since 1991 by projectionist and film collector Martin Heath, the former coach-house behind 401 Richmond has long operated as a bicycle repair shop during the day, and a cinema at night.
“I was blown away by the hybrid use of the space, how it could morph into a cinema,” Wood recalls. “And for the attendees, it was like a Venn diagram of multiple converging fandoms.”
These days, Wood attends four to five public film screenings a week, many taking place at traditional cinemas such as the Revue Cinema or the Paradise Theatre in Toronto’s west end. But many of the screenings he attends take place at non-traditional spaces such as the sci-fi bar See-Scape, CineCycle, which hosts the long-running Trash Palace series, Market Video in Kensington Market, or Eyesore Cinema, a video rental store with a screening room large enough to seat 40 guests.
“The ongoing assault on the city’s arts culture makes non-traditional screening spaces more important than ever,” says Wood, citing the recent funding, organizational and legal challenges faced by such organizations as Hot Docs, the Revue, and the Toronto Outdoor Picture Show.
“Eyesore has become a hub of Toronto’s DIY film community,” adds Wood, noting the programming offered by the Eyesore Cinema Screening Collective, which features several off-beat film series and many fests run by external renters.
“It feels like a clubhouse,” says Eyesore programmer Adam Thorn, who runs the annual Terrible Fest, a celebration of what he calls “backyard films, things you won’t see unless you come to the festival.”
At Eyesore, Alison Lang programs Tender Prey, a series dedicated to showcasing erotic thrillers of the 1980s and 90s. “Loving movies is such an incredible spectrum,” she says. “You can love high art, but you can also love the sleaziest of the sleaze, and you’ll have people there with you for both.”
You can visit Eyesore to see Fritz Lang’s M, but you can also find yourself within a group collectively laughing and cringing at the recently screened Richard Greico vehicle Tomcat: Dangerous Desires, where the former 21 Jump Street star plays a genetically-modified sexy cat man.
“It was a full house,” Lang says. “The other sellout I’ve had was Skyscraper, starring Anna Nicole Smith.”
Originally from Halifax, Lang began projecting films on a giant white sheet in her old coastal backyard because a neighbour was convalescing and unable to leave the house.
“We started showing movies to entertain him. We called it the Walk-In Cinema, and in typical Halifax fashion, it became fun and lawless.”
Wood says there’s a sense of anarchy visible in a micro-cinema’s programming, which faces different challenges to traditional cinemas that must guarantee a certain bottom line to meet payroll and other overhead costs. “They’re not trying to maximize ticket revenue. It allows the programming team to take bigger swings.”
“If I was doing Tender Prey in a regular cinema, I’d feel so much pressure to get butts in seats,” adds Lang. “Ninety per cent of the screenings here are pay-what-you-can. If only three people show up, I’m still having a wonderful time.”
Lizzie Violet, who along with her husband Zoltan DuLac, programs Killer-B Cinema at the Junction bar See-Scape, agrees with Lang. “We try to cover our costs, but we’re doing this because we love this community and the people who want to see a film together.”
Killer-B Cinema tries to screen films that have fallen in the public domain or are copyright-free, which Violet says “can sometimes be challenging.” Lang says Eyesore’s programmers license films through a non-theatrical distributor, for which they pay an annual fee. “I try to have a wide variety of options, because many of the films I want to screen at Tender Prey are somewhat forgotten, never had a DVD release, or simply aren’t available in the distributor’s catalogue.”
Although some micro-cinemas like CineCycle boast 35-mm and 16-mm projectors, Eyesore’s screening room is equipped with a digital video projector, capable of handling videocassette and disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray. “Those who come here are not format purists. They know they might be getting the worst-looking rip of all-time. Sometimes, the crummier it looks, the better,” adds Lang, who adds that she personally does not own a Blu-ray player. “It has been the subject of much mockery.”
The micro-cinema scene is also modular, adds Wood. “It can shift from one venue to another. Pack up your boxes of Super 8 reels, your projectors and seats and set up shop in a new space. It’s almost like a caravan.”
These spaces have a direct lineage to the earliest days of movie-going. The first 19th-century projection houses in Toronto were in fact pop-ups in empty storefronts along Yonge Street, lined with wooden planks for seating as a projector whirred at the back of the room, flickering short loops of nitrate film. The first actual film projection in Toronto history took place in a tent at the 1896 Exhibition.
Traditional cinemas typically book films far in advance, but smaller micro-cinemas can be more nimble, says Scott Miller Berry, managing director of the Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival, and one of the co-ordinators of re:assemblage collective, a screening group currently presenting films at the Bathurst Cultural Centre and 401 Richmond. “Sometimes we’ve picked films with less than a week’s notice, but groups like ours have tapped into an audience of people who are willing to move quickly.”
In this ever-evolving movie-going landscape, Thorn encourages people to bring their ideas to Eyesore’s collective. “If you’re weird or socially awkward, or have something to say, we welcome you. Weird wacky taste? You will find some of your people here. It’s a safe, inclusive space to do that.”
Or you can create your own space.
“I saw a hand-made flyer for a surprise Super 8 screening some time ago, which naturally piqued my attention,” says Wood. Turns out that local filmmaker Rennie Taylor had rented out Wychwood Barns in order to show their short Super 8 films. “The venue only seated 12,” adds Wood. “It was so packed that the program had to be run multiple times.”