Montreal's Cinéma du Parc is a very special experience

For as long as my adult filmgoing experience can remember I have attended Cinéma du Parc in Montreal. It is perhaps the city’s oldest art house cinema and home to screenings at numerous festivals in the five decades since it open in 1976. I like the whole experience. Located in the bowels of a small shopping mall within a complex of three adjoining residential towers (which I now count as my temporary home when in Montreal) the cinema also has a neat vibe. Entering from Av du Parc on Montreal’s downtown eastern fringe, in the McGill University student ghetto, you walk down a few short flights of stairs into a subterranean world of cafes, restaurants, stores, a large organic grocery store and regular grocery. (For tenants, one need never leave the building!). The cinema features three cinemas and I was surprised to learn it was the first multi-screen theatre in the city. Some of my fondest memories include regular rendezvouses there with a longtime Montreal cinephile friend, whom I first met more than 20 years ago waiting in line at Montreal’s then and now defunct world film festival (Festival des films du monde). Or watching famed British director Peter Greenaway get out of a taxi in front of the building for a screening of one of his metaphysical films at the city’s alternative Festival du nouveau cinema. Or remembering the words of a cinema usher as he flung open the doors to an eager crowd for the Montreal premier of French enfant terrible director Gaspar Noé’s 2009 film Enter the Void. “You are now about to, well, ‘enter the void!’ he shouted enthusiastically. Over the past decade the non-profit has come under the management of Mario Fortin, who also managed the city’s Cinéma Beaubien. And the two theaters plus Cinéma du Musée, located at the city’s fine arts museum further downtown – all of which feature international, Québécois and independent films – are marketed together. There are a great many independent cinemas in different cities I have attended and admired over the years. But as a native Montrealer and frequent visitor back to the city, Cinéma du Parc holds a special place in my heart.