REGINA, Sask. — Regina marked a movie milestone this week, 119 years after the city’s first movie theatre opened its doors and began a film-going tradition that continues today.
According to Heritage Regina, on Oct. 7, 1907, Regina celebrated the opening of the Edison Family Theatre, the first of its kind in the city.
Located at 1641 Broad St. at South Railway, admission cost 15 cents per person and the program changed three times a week. Some of the films shown that first week included The Dog and the Tramp, What Became of the Typewriter and All for a Necklace.
So how has film culture in Regina changed since then?
University of Regina film studies professor Jonathan Petrychyn takes us through how Regina’s movie-going culture has evolved over the past 119 years.
"In the early 20th century, most people would've engaged with movies at theatres like the Edison, and then the 1950s comes around and that's when drive-ins become really, really big. There's still drive-ins in Saskatchewan … but they were really popular in their heyday in the '50s when car culture became a thing in North America. Everybody had a car and gas was cheap and plentiful and so people would go on road trips and stop at drive-in cinemas," says Petrychyn.
Petrychyn says it wasn't until the 1970s that Regina began seeing a robust local film culture emerge.
"The film program at the University of Regina pops up in the 1970s. The Saskatchewan Film Co-operative is founded in the 1970s and these two institutions in Regina become really important beds for film activity, and that's when you begin seeing filmmakers from Saskatchewan, and from Regina, making films and exhibiting films," says Petrychyn.
Petrychyn is optimistic that movie theatres will stick around, even while competing with streaming giants, especially since in most cities there is a vibrant scene in "repertory theatres," which are smaller venues — usually single-screen — that play older movies as well as new ones.
"I think we're seeing bits of that in Regina. Of course, we're a much smaller centre too, but every time I go out to see a movie here, whether it's at the Landmark or the Cineplex, or even at the [Regina Public Library] film theatre, there are people out and people like going to see movies together."
Petrychyn says there's a real hunger for more independent film culture in Regina.
"Movie theatres aren't dead. Cinema is not dead. I don't think people should write them off," says Petrychyn.
