MONTREAL — As a young film student in Montreal, Denis Villeneuve discovered the works of directors like David Lynch on the screens of Cinéma du Parc, an independent movie house in the basement of a shopping centre near McGill University.
Decades later, and now a major Hollywood director behind films such as "Dune” and "Blade Runner 2049," the Quebec-born filmmaker has sent a love letter to the cinema of his youth, with an undisclosed donation to help it remain financially stable.
“I love the fact that (Cinéma du Parc) is one of the very few little theatres that survived the wave of Cineplex,” he told The Canadian Press in an interview Thursday, referring to the ubiquitous Canadian movie theatre giant.
His donation comes at a time when many independent movie theatres in Canada are struggling and other big names in Hollywood are throwing their support behind local theatres to keep them alive.
“I just wanted to express how I love those institutions and how I believe in them,” he said. “The idea was to put my money where my mouth is."
Following the initiative of Canadian-American filmmaker Jason Reitman, Villeneuve joined him and more than 30 other filmmakers in February — including Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan — to buy and restore Westwood’s Village Theater in Los Angeles.
“It was then that I told myself, ‘If I’m helping a cinema in Los Angeles, I have to do the same thing in Montreal,'" Villeneuve said.
On Tuesday, Toronto’s Revue Cinema announced it signed a new lease agreement to keep its doors open. A petition circulating online said the landlord was demanding a 50 per cent rent hike. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro shared a petition on X to save the theatre back in July.
And in June, donations from heavyweight directors like Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese saved the historic La Clef cinema in Paris, France, according to media reports.
Meanwhile, Cinéma du Parc is unveiling a new look on Thursday after spending more than $1.4 million on a facelift. The cinema's mezzanine has been overhauled and the theatre's interior boasts red drapes reminiscent of David Lynch's “Twin Peaks.” Even the bathroom stalls have been upgraded with portraits of movie characters.
Roxanne Sayegh, the theatre’s executive director, says attendance is encouraging and the cinema is financially sound, but the money from Villeneuve will help provide much-needed “stability” in the coming years.
“(Villeneuve) knew it was going to be a major investment for the cinema, and he believed in our mission," she said in an interview. "It's a cinema that has also been very important in him becoming a filmmaker. He's been coming to Cinéma du Parc for decades, so I when I reached out to him he accepted to support our cinema."
This is not the first time Villeneuve has given money to the non-profit team that runs Cinéma du Parc. Last year, Villeneuve donated another sum to Cinéma Beaubien, a Montreal independent movie theatre that is overseen by the same administration.
Sayegh says such support is critical at a time when so many cinemas are struggling.
In March, the Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors published a survey of nearly 70 different independent film exhibitors in Canada between December 2023 and February 2024. It found that the industry was in a state of “crisis,” with 60 per cent of respondents saying they operated at a loss at the end of their most recent financial year.
The Conseil des arts de Montréal, which supports the arts in Montreal, helped co-ordinate Villeneuve's donation. “What we really hope is that a donation like Denis Villeneuve's will inspire other people, other donors,” said Julien Valmary, the council's director of philanthropy and support.
Sonya William, director of the Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors, also hopes other filmmakers will follow in Villeneuve’s footsteps.
“Filmmakers and artists understand that cinema is the place that people really feel impacted by film, and so investing in that and supporting the cinemas that do creative programming and really show work by people who maybe aren't big stars yet … that's really the most important thing (and) the best way to build an audience,” she said.
However, William says the problems facing movie theatres and drive-in cinemas are bigger than funding.
“The way that film distribution works in Canada … is really, really tough, and it's kind of setting up independent cinemas to fail." She identified practices imposed by studios as serious obstacles to smaller theatres' viability.
One such practice known as "clean runs" forces cinemas that want to show a certain film to play it several times a day for a set number of weeks, even if it is not beneficial for the theatre, Cinéma du Parc programming director Jean- François Lamarche said. Another practice is "zoning," which Lamarche says is an unwritten rule under which studios give preference to larger commercial theatres in a designated geographic area, meaning independent cinemas have to wait for bigger theatres to stop showing a movie before they can screen it.
Villeneuve says that despite the turmoil in the independent cinema space, nothing can replace the feeling of watching a movie in a theatre like Cinéma du Parc.
"When you are in a theatre, you're committed to and you have to embrace the wavelength, the rhythm of a film that will pull you out of your reality in a way that no home theatre can do," he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Joe Bongiorno, The Canadian Press
