Past 16 months 'incredibly challenging' but also some positives for Sudbury Indie Cinema

Sudbury's Indie Cinema will be opening back up to cinephiles in just a few short days.

Ontario moved into Step 3 of the COVID-19 reopening plans earlier this month, which meant movie theatres could reopen with health and safety protocols in place.

But for small independent art houses it's taken some extra time due to staffing requirements and agreements with distributors.

"In the case of an independent cinema such as the Indie, since we operate on a calendar system, we needed a full slate of at least ten unique titles to be able to re-open," said Sudbury Indie Cinema director, Beth Mairs.

"That's a very different model than the commercial chains that book three Hollywood blockbusters and play them as long as they keep making money," she added.

A further complication was that when Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced the reopening plans, distributors that arthouse cinemas deal with were in France for the Cannes Film Festival.

Mairs said it was nearly impossible to get a response from anyone.

Last 16 months 'incredibly challenging'

Sudbury's Indie Cinema, nicknamed the Indie, can seat 170 moviegoers.

From mid-March 2020 until now, the cinema was closed for a full year, "in an on and off kind of way."

In fact, the art house had only been open for one year when it was forced to close during the first provincial lockdown in the spring of 2020.

"It's been incredibly challenging," Mairs said.

"We're just hitting our stride, and then we were forced to close and that first closure was five months."

Venue appealing when indoor capacity capped

Mairs says that one of the positives from the pandemic was that because the Indie was only one of two public art spaces that opened following the first lockdown, it became a venue for other organizations and agencies to use.

"Suddenly our venue of 170 seats — which had not been appealing to some arts partners to book as a venue for performances or for an event — was very appealing."

That's because indoor capacity had been capped. 

Mairs says during those 23 weeks the venue was open, the Sudbury Indie Cinema ran 50 different events in partnership with other agencies.

"We worked with almost every arts partner on both the Francophone and the non-Francophone side in Sudbury. We even partnered with arts organizations in Toronto that had gone completely virtual."

"I think we forged some deep friendships through the crisis," she said using the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra as an example. That arts organization has told Mairs it will continue planning programming at the cinema venue.

The Indie an arts hub

Becoming an arts hub was how Mairs said they originally wanted the Sudbury Indie Cinema to operate.

"Particularly for arts organizations that aren't well-heeled, that are emerging groups or unhoused — and that's a large portion of the arts groups in Sudbury."

"The pandemic allowed us to really accelerate that model."

As for plans for the cinema this fall, Mairs says adapting to whatever new restrictions could be announced by the provincial government.

'We feel optimistic in the sense that there is a pent up demand to have a collective experience, a communal experience in an art space, whether that's watching theatre, whether that's poetry, whether that's an independent film."

"I think there's a lot of different needs that are met by art spaces like this and we can expect that people who are not completely risk-averse will make their way to our doors."

The Sudbury Indie Cinema is expected to reopen its doors Thurs. Aug 5.