Up Front: Absence in the Arcades
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Flicking heck...
...a list of what cinemas are still operating in Canterbury
You'll have to hurry, they are falling like flies...
Movieland in Hornby is closing soon (Nov 18).
Academy and The Cloisters will be out as long as the Arts Centre - and who knows how long that will be - and who knows if the cinemas will survive whatever changes take place there (and I shudder to think if the current director and board are kept on...).
The Metro Gold, which was behind The Press, where Creation used to be, has been demolished as well, I think.
The Odeon's roof has caved in and had been left to rot for some time any way, so I doubt that that will ever rise again.
There's a small cinema in Methven Cinema Paradiso and that Flicks site lists others...
As to the 'Chch cinema which had little balconies with cafe chairs and sun umbrellas' - I'm thinking that was probably the old Regent Theatre which was decorated as mock Spanish townscape it even used to have a faux night sky and everything, but was burnt out in '79 and an Aquarium ended up downstairs with a coupla screens upstairs in the shell - I think it is coming down as well, they have already removed the building's distinctive corner dome tower...
Really only the Hoyts at Riccarton and Northlands and the Hollywood in Sumner and the soon to close Movieland are operating - the hideous Reading complex near me at the Palms is gonna reopen on Nov 17 .
Alice inVideoland is open on line and uses The Drawing Room (cnr Manchester and St Asaph st) as a pick up and drop off depot...
Gap Filler (as seen on Media 7) runs the odd outdoor screening, with cycle-powered cycle movies on a cycleshop site planned for the future...
and the Canterbury Film Soc has done as well as they can in the face of adversity, with screenings mostly at CPIT lately.
So the illusion of life flickers on in Chchch,
we ain't popped our sprockets yet... -
Just found another nice piece on the Regent at Lost Christchurch site.
Sadly I can't find any interior shots of the cinema itself - some one must have some, here's hoping... -
Lucy Stewart, in reply to
The $2 fried rice at Dumplings was *still* $2 in February. They’ve opened a new store now – I think it’s in Riccarton? Anyway, they missed their regulars so were pleased to be open again.
The Riccarton store was open in August 2010. I know because I made sure to visit it before I left the city for overseas. Every time I went into the CBD, I made sure to stop by the Cashel Mall store and get wontons or one of those gorgeous pork buns. I think I got more upset about that being demolished than a lot of technically more important or beautiful places, because it was somewhere I’d been so often.
it was on the other side over the road from the square. Wasn’t the cinema alongside the post office?
Right in the corner by the Catholic chapel? That was ace, but it closed a couple of years back now.
I’m going to Christchurch in early December for a few days, and I guess I’m going as an earthquake tourist. Or rather, it feels like I’m visiting a friend in hospital recovering from an accident. I miss Christchurch.
The one thing I want to do more than anything, when we make it back to NZ – fingers crossed sometime next year – is to visit Christchurch. Maybe more than seeing my family. And, yes, it’ll be as earthquake tourists, sort of, but because I lived there for six years and I loved it and I didn’t realise I did until it was gone, and I need to see it and say goodbye to what it was, and see the beginnings of what it’s going to be. And I don’t care what that looks like to anyone else, or if I break down in public, which there’s a good chance I will.
It was my city too, and I have to go back. I’ll go round. I’ll see all the fallen buildings, and Shag Pile, and the empty spaces. And if anyone has a problem with that? They can fuck off, basically. I just don’t have the emotional energy to worry about what people might think about why I’m there.
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Thanks, Ian, for such fullsome information. Are the Kaiapoi and Rangiora cinemas still open?
Oh, the dome gone! That hurts.
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Lilith __, in reply to
the old Regent Theatre which was decorated as mock Spanish townscape it even used to have a faux night sky and everything
I’m pretty sure I remember that from the 1980s, so perhaps it was restored after the fire?
One of my most treasured movie-going memories is of when the Film Society was in the Clock Tower of the Arts Centre. Climbing the twisty stairs to the top and sitting on our tiny rickety seats. They were like ordinary movie seats, joined together in rows, but they were flimsy: if anyone in your row moved, the whole row rocked. When the bells rang, on the hour, you couldn’t hear the movie, or anything else, at all. I remember it as being quite chilly up there too but this may be because I biked in from Bishopdale and had no proper wet-weather gear at the time (I was a poor student) so if it rained I just got wet. I don’t remember minding particularly, or thinking that if it was raining I shouldn’t go.
I remember seeing a long and poetic Japanese adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot which as far as I remember was entirely set in beautiful snow-covered landscapes. I emerged chilled into the chilly evening to find it was…snowing.
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Sacha, in reply to
One of my most treasured movie-going memories is of when the Film Society was in the Clock Tower of the Arts Centre. Climbing the twisty stairs to the top and sitting on our tiny rickety seats.
Same. Magic.
And intermission. -
Sacha, in reply to
<dupe post>
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
So the illusion of life flickers on in Chchch,
we ain’t popped our sprockets yet…...thanks to the persistence of vision?
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Lilith __, in reply to
Magic.
It was never quite as fun after they moved to Cloisters. Although it certainly was more comfortable. :-)
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Isabel Hitchings, in reply to
I just don’t have the emotional energy to worry about what people might think about why I’m there.
I'll be thinking "I hope Lucy has time for a drink"
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
Yeah. Before that, it was in the museum- I think with the same seats. Horrible seats, and often the movies would be very long, and sometimes tedious. And I found (I'd like to develop this into a general theory, but maybe it's just me :)) that the slow pace, and some moments of boredom, often led me deeper into a strange territory where suddenly emotional or aesthetic pleasure could descend in a wave- or more accurately, rise up my spine, oddly, since the stimulus was via eyes and ears. And then the hard seat and cold room vanished completely.
Afterwards people would chat, or run off to avoid being seconded onto the committee, and everyone, it seemed, came and left on bikes. -
I'm loving hearing all these memories. Christchurch was a city that my family and I went to many times when I was growing up (all part of the Tom Clark Family Tour of the Southern Isle - May Edition) but I remember very little of it, except Noahs, where we always stayed. I do remember never being entirely comfortable there - Dunedin was more my sort of place, even as a child. But however you feel about a place as an adult, if it's a place you grew up, or where you made memories, it's going to be important in your life. And it helps if there are others to build those memories with.
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Hebe, in reply to
...the slow pace, and some moments of boredom, often led me deeper into a strange territory...
Christ Stopped at Eboli was my arthouse film epiphany. Never went back.
the old Regent Theatre which was decorated as mock Spanish townscape it even used to have a faux night sky and everything
That night sky and the balconies were truly magical to a teenager: Riviera dreams.
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Islander, in reply to
But however you feel about a place as an adult, if it’s a place you grew up, or where you made memories, it’s going to be important in your life. And it helps if there are others to build those memories with.
O yes Jackie!
I was very lucky: I had Chchch & Otepoti *&* Oamaru & Moeraki as my growing-up places. However things have changed - in all those sites - I have other people who also retain the childhood/teenage memories.Unforunately, I am one of the *very** few people who have memories of Okarito
even 35 years ago.**There is one other living person, who is ill with cancer. She is my oldest remaining friend, and a wonderful creative hospitable naybore...
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Ah, film society screenings--the famous night when the Wellington Film Society screened Louis Malle's "India" with the reels out of order and no one noticed.
Has anyone caught the telemovie "Temple Grandin" screening on the new SoHo channel this weekend? It is very good.
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Jackie Clark, in reply to
Oh dear, Islander. Then you need to cram all your memories together, and make remembrance live!
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Lilith __, in reply to
:-) Funny that you, me, and Sacha were all there and didn't know each other at all. I wasn't very outgoing back then so I never hung around to chat.
It's so great having common memories. I think among Chch people there's going to be a sharp division between those who remember the city pre-quakes and those who are children now and won't. The city they grow up in will be so different to our remembered one.
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Hebe, in reply to
and everyone, it seemed, came and left on bikes
Oh that's so evocative. They did, everywhere. Now I feel sad as I suddenly remember blowing out cold 'puffs" of frosty air as we decanted from the Victorian, the Arts Centre, the Dux-when it was a restaurant and had bands in the corner on a little stage, the pictures in the Square, the Mykonos, and that pub in Oxford Terrace where the med students drank..
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Hilary Stace, in reply to
Yes great movie. I've seen it twice now. Temple Grandin approves of it, so it must be a pretty accurate portrayal. My favourite scene the one where her mother gets told off by the 'expert' for being a bad mother and blamed for her child's autism.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
reel life...
you, me, and Sacha...
...and me too, occasionally - Museum (Bunuel and Len Lye, etc), Clocktower (vivid memories of a neat bacon slicer / plasticine ball animation - mesmerising) and some Cloisters showings - didn't they also have some out at Ilam?
I used to be cowed by all the 'cool people' there and never spoke to anyone much (still don't really, not strangers anyway...)I enjoyed the Temple Grandin minipic on SoHo tonight and The Hour looks like it could be interesting (once I get rid of my Absolute Beginners flashbacks) But am NOT enjoying all the bloody fireworks outside, Shirley is like a war zone and the cats are flinching at every new salvo...
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
last orders...
and that pub in Oxford Terrace where the med students drank..
The Grenadier, (next to the Artists Quarter/Victorian) I think the Med Students (Doctor material and lawyers) drank in the Bearskin Room, I'd gravitate to the public bar, out the back, with the pooltables or the other big room with the central bar (and the nurses)...
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Lilith __, in reply to
am NOT enjoying all the bloody fireworks outside, Shirley is like a war zone and the cats are flinching at every new salvo…
Opawa too. My cat was attacked by dogs last weekend and the combination of loud thumps and bangs plus every dog in the neighbourhood barking like crazy is not causing happiness!
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Hebe, in reply to
The Grenadier
Yes, yes. And the Gladstone of course; did you ever see
Toy Love there? And Tony Peake's rowdy lot?One of the best things about the earthquakes is that it's permissible to do this nostalgia stuff sometimes without being a silly old sod.
And usually after the Grenadier there would be a party, often at those big two-storey wooden houses on teh corner of Chester St East and Madras St.
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Isabel Hitchings, in reply to
I think among Chch people there’s going to be a sharp division between those who remember the city pre-quakes and those who are children now and won’t. The city they grow up in will be so different to our remembered one.
I am quite curious as to what my children will remember of this time and of Christchurch before. I think my oldest is big enough (he's going to be 10 next week) to have fairly clear memories of how things were but his younger brother may not be. I'm not sure which will be easier.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
I’ll be thinking “I hope Lucy has time for a drink”
Also most definitely on the list!
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