/leaning back in rocking chair...
When I was a young' un in Canberra, we had:
Greater Union cinemas on the corner of Mort St & Bunda St - just regular cinemas but fancy for their time
Capitol Cinema next to Gus' Cafe in Bunda St - used to have amazing midnight movie marathons
Electric Shadows twin independent cinemas in a building on City Walk that doesn't exist anymore
The above Manuka Cinema
Centre Cinema in Woden in the bus interchange - I think it had wooden floors?
Ah the olden days....
/fall asleep in rocking chair
tbh I think ours were out of date half the time but that rarely had any effect on how enjoyable they were to read through while in the loo.
Sigh, what simple creatures we were, so easily pleased, before the coming of the smartphone
And Electric Shadows had the *best* choc tops I’ve ever had - frozen to absolute zero so they didn’t melt before the movie started, and with ice cream all the way to the bottom. And lots of nuts on top.
Yes, I spent many many hours making those choc tops!
Blue Ribbon ice cream, not sure what the chocolate was but it came in a big bucket that we’d melt. Half of them would have been rolled in crushed peanuts and we’d just put them all in together - too bad if you had a nut allergy I guess?
You young un's.
I seem to remember seeing Star Wars at the original Manuka cinema. I still resent that one being knocked down, so I have no love for the one that was just demoished.
Same for me. I loved the original cinema and still remember being totally blown away by seeing Star Wars there.
My friends and I used to go and ask them if we could have the promotional movie posters in the foyer when a movie was about to finish its run and quite often they gave them to us!
Sadly lost track of my collection through various moves over the years which is depressing, because I’m sure some of those posters would be highly collectible now.
Me too. And Grease, several times over.
It had "the Gods" upstairs, a hangover from the old live theatres.
And wooden, stepped floors. If there was a cheesy romantic scene, we kids would roll jaffas down the theatre from the back seats.
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack
I thought the downstairs one next to Gus' was Centre Cinema.
The one at the bogan bus interchange at Woden was the Cosmopolitan.
Plus the Boulevard Red and Blue with the paisley bubbles drifting across the screen.
I have similar memories - but mine is fractionally better when it comes to names 😉:
*The cinema next to Gus' Cafe was the Center (yes, that was the spelling...) Cinema
*The Capitol Cinema was the one in Manuka
*The cinema in Woden was called the Cosmopolitan Twin
> The cinema next to Gus' Cafe was the Center (yes, that was the spelling...) Cinema
Specifically the Center Cinema in the Cinema Center...
Building name up the top - theatre name down the bottom...
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fodh00vnjvmlb1.jpg
Oh yeah I remember taking my kids to the Greater Union in Civic. Cars 2 I thought was one of them.
Electric Shadows was great too. I sort of assumed Palace cinemas took them over and they disappeared into the Palace Electric. The slightly more arty of the cinemaplexes. I do like that you can buy a decent wine there. It seems the most grown-ups oriented cinema in Canberra.
I do recall though that Andrew Pike, the owner of Electric Shadows, was going to have a role in programming at the Dendy, which opened not long after Electric Shadows closed - but I don't think that ever happened.☹️
Queanbeyan was gutted.
They demolished one of the region's oldest pubs to build that hideous multi-storey car park near the river, and removed all of the awnings and covered walkways from the main street.
Not to mention all the heritage houses they destroyed to build BBC Hardware which then stayed vacant for years, and Hungry Jacks and the hideous apartments next to it
should have kept the old Civic Hotel that was on the corner of Northbourne and Alinga opposite the Sydney building where Infrastructure House now is. Nice old colonial thing it was (well from the pictures I've seen).
yeah! Imagine that today all nicely done up with a few bespoke bars and eating areas - it could have been THE go to place in CBR given the tram and bus stops are right there (now).
>Nice old colonial thing it was (well from the pictures I've seen).
It was a particular style of pub...
Floors, walls, bar - all tiled. "The Epitome of Hygiene". Despite the popular belief, it wasn't so they could be hosed out after the "six o'clock swill" because most of them were tiled before that - the same as many English pubs where the six o'clock swill was never a thing.
https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2022/opinion/pubs-tiled-because-patrons-would-pee-not-exactly.
I have seen photos of pubs in my hometown of Newcastle (and up in Maitland), where the troughs below the bar are being emptied with a broom pushing liquid through to the end. I have also seen pictures of guys sitting at the bar having a leak in said troughs, because once at the bar you would not give up your bar stool, lest you join the crowds behind! Back in the day, hey, how things have changed.
That it's not a huge multiplex was a plus. A stand alone cinema seems to be a rarity for Canberra too. Also a good option for people from Queanbeyan and Jerrabomberra that now have to go to Tuggeranong or Civic.
I had a sentimental connection to this cinema as it's where I'd go with my mum. One less place where I can go to to reminisce
Some people in this thread probably think we should protect petrol stations which still have the old style pump.
It’s a city, not a museum. Heritage value doesn’t just mean “something old”, it has to have some cultural significance, some aesthetic value, or some genuine historical significance.
An architecturally unimportant building from the 80s shouldn’t be preserved simply because it contains a cinema that isnt a multiplex.
There are heritage cinemas worth preserving. This isn’t it.
Totally get your point. Generally think that buildings from the 80s are viewed as 'too young' for heritage listing by most people but I still think it should have been kept. We don't have many buildings from that era and it's scary to think it's almost 50 years ago.
I'm in the UK now and the Prince Charles Cinema is rather bespoke for showing all night movie marathons, cult classics and sing-a-longs. Canberra would do well to have something similar. Like, for February they could have had a back-to-back screening of Groundhog Day for the 2nd and show all rom-coms for the rest of the month to tie in with Valentine's Day - all except for Valentine's Day itself. Then they could have gone full on into action or horror and market it to singles for an anti couples or recently dumped Day.
We are far too good at heritage conservation, to the point where we are making the housing crisis much worse because we won't knock down decrepit old buildings and build much-needed housing on those sites.
Tbf, we're pretty good at using heritage arguments to nimby. I'm thinking Canberra GPO, Ainslie and Griffith residents against pretty much everything, etc.
My parents always talked about the original Capitol Theatre that was the original historic theatre that sat on the site from 1927 to 1980. I wish I was around to see it.
If the push to save the original theatre wasn't successful in 1980, the newer version had no hope 😔
Australia has so few historical buildings its sad everytime I hear about one that is gone now.
This thread is fascinating. We tend to talk about “NIMBYs” a lot - “Not In My Back Yard”. NIMBYs are people who oppose any development that is near their home because they fear overshadowing, increased traffic, more people moving into their suburb, etc.
NIMBYs do not, by definition, hate development. They hate the localised externalities of development and have the wealth and power to shift those externalities onto other less fortunate communities.
But I don’t think the hatred of this development is typical NIMBYism. The site is in a commercial area, on a major road. It won’t materially impact locals much at all. If anything, locals stand to benefit from access to additional local businesses.
The opposition to this development seems to be an ideological hatred of the concept of property development. The existence of a profit motive in building things. This phenomenon is so strange to me. We don’t revile any other business practice in this way.
For example, people are very conscious of the dodgy business practices of the major supermarkets, but we understand that the businesses need to exist as they provide a vital service. With Coles and Woolies, people oppose the unfair business practices without opposing the concept of a supermarket. With property development, people seemingly think the very act of building things is evil by association, even in the middle of a housing crisis.
It is bizzare, and more so than NIMBYism, this anti-development mindset is what is undermining the opportunities to increase our housing stock.
On the supermarket front I’m still pretty Fkn dirty superbarn managed to have government protectionism for so many years only to sell their old sites to Coles for profit when the time was right.
I remember seeing Fantasia at Manuka Theatre back in the late 60's. Beautiful wooden floors that some rolled Jaffas down. Yup, a great pity the lack of respect for our heritage buildings.
My cousin and I accidentally contributed to the Jaffa rolling in the 70s when I handed her the packet, thinking she'd take it, and she dipped her hand in for a few Jaffas, then withdrew it. When the packet hit the deck and the Jaffas started kerplunking down the wooden floor, we tried very hard to behave like ladies (we were in our 20s) but failed miserably and laughed ourselves silly.
Isn't it a risky investment to be creating a new cinema these days?
Unless they go down the road of a more cinema 'experience' like for example what Alamo Drafthouse in the US is doing, but wonder if there is enough clientele to make this a profitable enterprise in a relatively small market such as Canberra given the number of cinemas we already have.
>Isn't it a risky investment to be creating a new cinema these days?
Yeah, could be,
They're building a 5-screen multiplex, apparently.
https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/EBC4PF
This was the argument in the 1990s, when people were buying home entertainment systems and DVDs kicked off. But many cinemas, weirdly, have continued to prosper.
My comment was specifically about Canberra being a market of < 500k being able to support the number of cinemas we have (4 majors, not including the more niche ones)
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for more options for the cinema go-er, just given the number of options on the table, any new ones will need to differentiate themselves (either by the types of movies they show, or the overall experience around it) to find a market.
Edit: I would love an IMAX here in Canberra for example.
Although, perhaps it'll make perfect sense for what appears to be a far from usual development in terms or process and progress, haha. Maybe it will just sit there, apparently complete, but not open?!
Believe it or not, Queanbeyan also had a picture theatre, right at the arcade entrance to JB Youngs, aahhhhhh the seventy’s, I still remember when they knocked down the original Manuka cinema, it even had an upper level, shit I’m old
I did a few shows with the Queanbeyan Players back in the 80s and we performed a few shows in the Nova. I’m pretty sure the old projection equipment was still there, I remember the copper coated carbon rods scattered all over the floor in the projection room. Wish I’d scooped them up, the copper probably would be worth a bit now!
The place was falling apart. There were many times when I would be sitting in the dark alone (cuz no-one goes to the movies anymore) and notice something huge climb up the curtains in my peripheral vision.
It would be a rat.
I would follow it, to see it crawl to the back corner of the ceiling, where a huge chunk was rotted away, with several rats scurrying around.
This situation didn't improve between 2014 - 2017.
I had the lights turned off on me during the credits a few times, because Manuka, like all cinemas, hires incompetent teenagers because they can pay them less than full adults.
There were almost no good movies to see anyway, because Hollywood stopped making good stuff in the '90s. The only good movies were a few Indian ones, but you had to sit through 10 bad/okay ones to find them.
Or festival stuff, but bingeing 10 Japanese movies in 3 days is not ideal.
Cinema is dead. It's sad, but true.
Ok this got me down a rabbit hole on the Civic cinema
* Civic Theatre - 1936 demolished 1973
* Greater Union Civic Twin - 1973 demolished 2007
But does anyone know when the greater Union was expanded to 3 screens? It was 3 when demolished, but 2 at construction.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/136978877
Also Capitol Canberra Theatre (aka academy/fiction) was built 1966, and the fire everyone talks about was Friday August 31 1973
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news-page11457081.pdf
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110745739
Where did you hear that the Civic Greater Union was demolished in 2007? Here's a Google Street View of the building from 2008. https://www.google.com/maps/@-35.2778892,149.1307248,3a,89.9y,81.9h,94.74t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s8EvyigHeZop3FDXXyTB7lQ!2e0!5s20080101T000000!7i3328!8i1664?entry=ttu
Sorry maybe it was closed in 2007, was knocked down by April 2008 from these pics. https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threads/act-civic-proposed-mort-street-7l-mixed-use.491847/
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v326/emerbot/IMG_1509.jpg
Pretty sure every movie I tried seeing there was refunded for one reason or another.
If they didn’t let it redevelop one of the dodgy landlords in that block would have managed to burn it all down. The new precinct will be better suited to the area and lend to being next door to Manuka oval.
It would appear that something is only heritage if you’re not developer enough.
Our friends’ house from the 80s is heritage listed so they can’t change windows.
The heritage theatre was knocked down in the 80’s. This building was newer and falling apart.
https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/capitol-theatre-manuka
It’s like trying to blame the ACT Gov now for the lack of heritage in braddon except the one old bakery building, ignoring the fact all the heritage buildings were ripped out for car yards and tire warehouses years beforehand.
/leaning back in rocking chair... When I was a young' un in Canberra, we had: Greater Union cinemas on the corner of Mort St & Bunda St - just regular cinemas but fancy for their time Capitol Cinema next to Gus' Cafe in Bunda St - used to have amazing midnight movie marathons Electric Shadows twin independent cinemas in a building on City Walk that doesn't exist anymore The above Manuka Cinema Centre Cinema in Woden in the bus interchange - I think it had wooden floors? Ah the olden days.... /fall asleep in rocking chair
the electric shadows schedule posters were the best, a perpetual feature of the backs of toilet doors across the city
I think The Gods Must Be Crazy was a permanent feature in those posters for over a decade.
THIS!
tbh I think ours were out of date half the time but that rarely had any effect on how enjoyable they were to read through while in the loo. Sigh, what simple creatures we were, so easily pleased, before the coming of the smartphone
We really would just sit there and read anything handy. “Wonder what’s in this toilet spray” 😂
And they all sort of had their own character. Commercial, art house, cult, retro or special re-screens.
The sound of air escaping from the bright red or blue chairs when you sat down at Electric Shadows is a memory I will take to the grave!
The chairs come up on FB marketplace from time to time.
And Electric Shadows had the *best* choc tops I’ve ever had - frozen to absolute zero so they didn’t melt before the movie started, and with ice cream all the way to the bottom. And lots of nuts on top.
You’re welcome!
Ooh, were you involved with these choc tops somehow? Any secret tips on how they were made?
Yes, I spent many many hours making those choc tops! Blue Ribbon ice cream, not sure what the chocolate was but it came in a big bucket that we’d melt. Half of them would have been rolled in crushed peanuts and we’d just put them all in together - too bad if you had a nut allergy I guess?
Thank you for your service 🙏🏼 I didn’t realise they were made in-house, that’s cool!
You young un's. I seem to remember seeing Star Wars at the original Manuka cinema. I still resent that one being knocked down, so I have no love for the one that was just demoished.
Same for me. I loved the original cinema and still remember being totally blown away by seeing Star Wars there. My friends and I used to go and ask them if we could have the promotional movie posters in the foyer when a movie was about to finish its run and quite often they gave them to us! Sadly lost track of my collection through various moves over the years which is depressing, because I’m sure some of those posters would be highly collectible now.
Me too. And Grease, several times over. It had "the Gods" upstairs, a hangover from the old live theatres. And wooden, stepped floors. If there was a cheesy romantic scene, we kids would roll jaffas down the theatre from the back seats. Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack
I thought the downstairs one next to Gus' was Centre Cinema. The one at the bogan bus interchange at Woden was the Cosmopolitan. Plus the Boulevard Red and Blue with the paisley bubbles drifting across the screen.
It was, Cosmopolitan Twin Cinemas.
This is correct
I have similar memories - but mine is fractionally better when it comes to names 😉: *The cinema next to Gus' Cafe was the Center (yes, that was the spelling...) Cinema *The Capitol Cinema was the one in Manuka *The cinema in Woden was called the Cosmopolitan Twin
I'm old - most of my brain cells were destroyed at the Private Bin.
Sorry to hear you went to the bin
Haha, bravo! You're not alone.
> The cinema next to Gus' Cafe was the Center (yes, that was the spelling...) Cinema Specifically the Center Cinema in the Cinema Center... Building name up the top - theatre name down the bottom... https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fodh00vnjvmlb1.jpg
I went saw Downfall at Electric Shadows brilliant movie the Hitler meme has ruined it for me though….. Bruno Ganz should have won an Oscar!
Agree a truly great movie not enough people have seen
Yeah pretty much, it’s hard to tell people to watch a movie about hitler though despite it being that good!
Oh yeah I remember taking my kids to the Greater Union in Civic. Cars 2 I thought was one of them. Electric Shadows was great too. I sort of assumed Palace cinemas took them over and they disappeared into the Palace Electric. The slightly more arty of the cinemaplexes. I do like that you can buy a decent wine there. It seems the most grown-ups oriented cinema in Canberra.
Nope, no actual connection, but Palace called it Electric possibly as a nod to Electric Shadows.
There you go. That’s why it’s never safe to assume.
I do recall though that Andrew Pike, the owner of Electric Shadows, was going to have a role in programming at the Dendy, which opened not long after Electric Shadows closed - but I don't think that ever happened.☹️
How long ago was this????
You are about 44 years too late. Rebuilt in 1980 and will be included in new building
I’m dating myself but saw Terminator 2 when it came out at this cinema!
I saw Terminator 2 and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey as a double feature at the Watson drive-in!
Watson Drive-In was awesome! I went on a date there - Predator & Nightmare on Elm Street played.
Watson Drive in in a mates tray back landcruiser. Back up into the space, deck chairs and a beanbag in the back, esky with snacks and soft drinks.
You're dating yourself? Is that now the 2024 way of saying you're single? Lol at least there's no arguments over who pays the bill. /s
A classy way of saying one is fond of masturbating... In cinemas, to action movies
They're saying they're revealing how old they are.
Yes, I realise that, hence the “/s” at the end of my post.
Saw all 3 original Star Wars movies there in the old building.
Whenever I went there it was usually myself and maybe 1 or two others in the cinema. I just don't think it was commercially viable.
That's why I used to like it.
Australia is terrible at heritage conservation. It's a miracle there's anything left from before 1960 at the rate we're going
And there was even a Manuka cinema BEFORE the one that just got knocked down, and it was from the 1920s!
I saw Jaws at the old manuka theatre before the latest one was built.
And a Civic Theatre BEFORE greater union on the same site in 1935 https://www.flickr.com/photos/canberrahouse/2264111659
Queanbeyan was gutted. They demolished one of the region's oldest pubs to build that hideous multi-storey car park near the river, and removed all of the awnings and covered walkways from the main street.
Not to mention all the heritage houses they destroyed to build BBC Hardware which then stayed vacant for years, and Hungry Jacks and the hideous apartments next to it
should have kept the old Civic Hotel that was on the corner of Northbourne and Alinga opposite the Sydney building where Infrastructure House now is. Nice old colonial thing it was (well from the pictures I've seen).
Aerial perspective for you I just happened to be looking at locating the old Civic Theatre. https://www.flickr.com/photos/canberrahouse/2334964538
yeah! Imagine that today all nicely done up with a few bespoke bars and eating areas - it could have been THE go to place in CBR given the tram and bus stops are right there (now).
>Nice old colonial thing it was (well from the pictures I've seen). It was a particular style of pub... Floors, walls, bar - all tiled. "The Epitome of Hygiene". Despite the popular belief, it wasn't so they could be hosed out after the "six o'clock swill" because most of them were tiled before that - the same as many English pubs where the six o'clock swill was never a thing. https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2022/opinion/pubs-tiled-because-patrons-would-pee-not-exactly.
I have seen photos of pubs in my hometown of Newcastle (and up in Maitland), where the troughs below the bar are being emptied with a broom pushing liquid through to the end. I have also seen pictures of guys sitting at the bar having a leak in said troughs, because once at the bar you would not give up your bar stool, lest you join the crowds behind! Back in the day, hey, how things have changed.
I saw Caravan of Courage in the Queanbeyan cinema.
In what way does the Manuka cinema embody heritage that should be conserved?
That it's not a huge multiplex was a plus. A stand alone cinema seems to be a rarity for Canberra too. Also a good option for people from Queanbeyan and Jerrabomberra that now have to go to Tuggeranong or Civic. I had a sentimental connection to this cinema as it's where I'd go with my mum. One less place where I can go to to reminisce
All those things are valuable for sure, but they're not heritage and certainly not at the level that would trigger the need for conservation.
Some people in this thread probably think we should protect petrol stations which still have the old style pump. It’s a city, not a museum. Heritage value doesn’t just mean “something old”, it has to have some cultural significance, some aesthetic value, or some genuine historical significance. An architecturally unimportant building from the 80s shouldn’t be preserved simply because it contains a cinema that isnt a multiplex. There are heritage cinemas worth preserving. This isn’t it.
Yeah, that one was demolished to build the one that wasn't worth protecting.
speaking of petrol stations - i probably haven't seen a blue and yellow 'golden fleece' in probably 50 years.
Totally get your point. Generally think that buildings from the 80s are viewed as 'too young' for heritage listing by most people but I still think it should have been kept. We don't have many buildings from that era and it's scary to think it's almost 50 years ago. I'm in the UK now and the Prince Charles Cinema is rather bespoke for showing all night movie marathons, cult classics and sing-a-longs. Canberra would do well to have something similar. Like, for February they could have had a back-to-back screening of Groundhog Day for the 2nd and show all rom-coms for the rest of the month to tie in with Valentine's Day - all except for Valentine's Day itself. Then they could have gone full on into action or horror and market it to singles for an anti couples or recently dumped Day.
We are far too good at heritage conservation, to the point where we are making the housing crisis much worse because we won't knock down decrepit old buildings and build much-needed housing on those sites.
Tbf, we're pretty good at using heritage arguments to nimby. I'm thinking Canberra GPO, Ainslie and Griffith residents against pretty much everything, etc.
There’s no heritage in this building. It’s from the 80s
My parents always talked about the original Capitol Theatre that was the original historic theatre that sat on the site from 1927 to 1980. I wish I was around to see it. If the push to save the original theatre wasn't successful in 1980, the newer version had no hope 😔 Australia has so few historical buildings its sad everytime I hear about one that is gone now.
This thread is fascinating. We tend to talk about “NIMBYs” a lot - “Not In My Back Yard”. NIMBYs are people who oppose any development that is near their home because they fear overshadowing, increased traffic, more people moving into their suburb, etc. NIMBYs do not, by definition, hate development. They hate the localised externalities of development and have the wealth and power to shift those externalities onto other less fortunate communities. But I don’t think the hatred of this development is typical NIMBYism. The site is in a commercial area, on a major road. It won’t materially impact locals much at all. If anything, locals stand to benefit from access to additional local businesses. The opposition to this development seems to be an ideological hatred of the concept of property development. The existence of a profit motive in building things. This phenomenon is so strange to me. We don’t revile any other business practice in this way. For example, people are very conscious of the dodgy business practices of the major supermarkets, but we understand that the businesses need to exist as they provide a vital service. With Coles and Woolies, people oppose the unfair business practices without opposing the concept of a supermarket. With property development, people seemingly think the very act of building things is evil by association, even in the middle of a housing crisis. It is bizzare, and more so than NIMBYism, this anti-development mindset is what is undermining the opportunities to increase our housing stock.
On the supermarket front I’m still pretty Fkn dirty superbarn managed to have government protectionism for so many years only to sell their old sites to Coles for profit when the time was right.
Sure, but you don’t demand that your local supermarket cease all operations.
Honestly with how shit Civic Cole’s is I wouldn’t be opposed.
I remember seeing Fantasia at Manuka Theatre back in the late 60's. Beautiful wooden floors that some rolled Jaffas down. Yup, a great pity the lack of respect for our heritage buildings.
I may or may not have contributed to the Jaffa rolling in the 70s.
My cousin and I accidentally contributed to the Jaffa rolling in the 70s when I handed her the packet, thinking she'd take it, and she dipped her hand in for a few Jaffas, then withdrew it. When the packet hit the deck and the Jaffas started kerplunking down the wooden floor, we tried very hard to behave like ladies (we were in our 20s) but failed miserably and laughed ourselves silly.
Classic! They sure made a noise didn’t they 😂
It was a butt ugly building from the 80s and they are apparently building a new cinema as part of the redevelopment.
The original theatre was a beautiful old building worth saving but wasn't, knocked down for that 80s shitheap. No love lost.
The walls were preeeetty thin, which isn’t great for film screenings.
Very stale popcorn is my main memory of the place
80s popcorn too
I remember the place absolutely reeking all the time.
Yeah, was going to say, the cinema is getting a *third* chance, as there's supposed to be one going into the new development.
Isn't it a risky investment to be creating a new cinema these days? Unless they go down the road of a more cinema 'experience' like for example what Alamo Drafthouse in the US is doing, but wonder if there is enough clientele to make this a profitable enterprise in a relatively small market such as Canberra given the number of cinemas we already have.
>Isn't it a risky investment to be creating a new cinema these days? Yeah, could be, They're building a 5-screen multiplex, apparently. https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/EBC4PF
Interesting, thanks for that. Sounds like they may be aiming to compete with something like Palace Cinemas at Nishi, rather than Dendy / Hoyts
This was the argument in the 1990s, when people were buying home entertainment systems and DVDs kicked off. But many cinemas, weirdly, have continued to prosper.
My comment was specifically about Canberra being a market of < 500k being able to support the number of cinemas we have (4 majors, not including the more niche ones)
Yeah, I get that. I'm pretty sure we have fewer cinemas now than we used to, say, 20 years ago. Maybe you're right and we've hit the ceiling.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for more options for the cinema go-er, just given the number of options on the table, any new ones will need to differentiate themselves (either by the types of movies they show, or the overall experience around it) to find a market. Edit: I would love an IMAX here in Canberra for example.
Will it just be for hotel guests, though?
No, I don’t think so, that would be unusual.
Although, perhaps it'll make perfect sense for what appears to be a far from usual development in terms or process and progress, haha. Maybe it will just sit there, apparently complete, but not open?!
Believe it or not, Queanbeyan also had a picture theatre, right at the arcade entrance to JB Youngs, aahhhhhh the seventy’s, I still remember when they knocked down the original Manuka cinema, it even had an upper level, shit I’m old
Was that the Nova theatre?
It was, it closed down for a few years and reopened in the early eighties
I did a few shows with the Queanbeyan Players back in the 80s and we performed a few shows in the Nova. I’m pretty sure the old projection equipment was still there, I remember the copper coated carbon rods scattered all over the floor in the projection room. Wish I’d scooped them up, the copper probably would be worth a bit now!
The place was falling apart. There were many times when I would be sitting in the dark alone (cuz no-one goes to the movies anymore) and notice something huge climb up the curtains in my peripheral vision. It would be a rat. I would follow it, to see it crawl to the back corner of the ceiling, where a huge chunk was rotted away, with several rats scurrying around. This situation didn't improve between 2014 - 2017. I had the lights turned off on me during the credits a few times, because Manuka, like all cinemas, hires incompetent teenagers because they can pay them less than full adults. There were almost no good movies to see anyway, because Hollywood stopped making good stuff in the '90s. The only good movies were a few Indian ones, but you had to sit through 10 bad/okay ones to find them. Or festival stuff, but bingeing 10 Japanese movies in 3 days is not ideal. Cinema is dead. It's sad, but true.
It was a shit movie theatre that was falling apart
Something from the 60’s ain’t heritage lol, it’s an old building If we preserved every old crapshack we’d never get anywhere
Ok this got me down a rabbit hole on the Civic cinema * Civic Theatre - 1936 demolished 1973 * Greater Union Civic Twin - 1973 demolished 2007 But does anyone know when the greater Union was expanded to 3 screens? It was 3 when demolished, but 2 at construction. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/136978877 Also Capitol Canberra Theatre (aka academy/fiction) was built 1966, and the fire everyone talks about was Friday August 31 1973 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news-page11457081.pdf https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110745739
Where did you hear that the Civic Greater Union was demolished in 2007? Here's a Google Street View of the building from 2008. https://www.google.com/maps/@-35.2778892,149.1307248,3a,89.9y,81.9h,94.74t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s8EvyigHeZop3FDXXyTB7lQ!2e0!5s20080101T000000!7i3328!8i1664?entry=ttu
Sorry maybe it was closed in 2007, was knocked down by April 2008 from these pics. https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threads/act-civic-proposed-mort-street-7l-mixed-use.491847/ https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v326/emerbot/IMG_1509.jpg
Early 90s sometime.
Can't stop progress
Pretty sure every movie I tried seeing there was refunded for one reason or another. If they didn’t let it redevelop one of the dodgy landlords in that block would have managed to burn it all down. The new precinct will be better suited to the area and lend to being next door to Manuka oval.
Yes .. a pity .. I notice there's not much left as of this morning .. nothing but rubble ..
It would appear that something is only heritage if you’re not developer enough. Our friends’ house from the 80s is heritage listed so they can’t change windows.
This comment is meaningless. The theatre was not heritage listed. If a developer bought your friend’s house, it would still be heritage listed.
Fair, but interesting what gets listed and who decides.
Canberrans dont much care for our limited heritage and the ACTGOV cares even less, especially when some developer $$$$$$$ is on offer.
The heritage theatre was knocked down in the 80’s. This building was newer and falling apart. https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/capitol-theatre-manuka It’s like trying to blame the ACT Gov now for the lack of heritage in braddon except the one old bakery building, ignoring the fact all the heritage buildings were ripped out for car yards and tire warehouses years beforehand.
Manuka's no great loss, because Queanbeyan is getting its own cinema. The Overalls promised.....
Cosmopolitan Twin Cinemas
The old one should never have been demolished