Art Cinema offers different movie choices
The Logan Art Cinema management would like you to think about the movies you watch.
Grant Baer, one of the theater’s managers, said, “[The theater’s movies] are usually not the big-budget, action-packed movies. They are more thought-provoking, not just popcorn movies.”
Since 2003, the Logan Art Cinema has provided Logan with the city’s only venue focused on independent and art-house films.
“We show the movies that big theaters don’t take,” Kelly Hart, a USU freshman and manager at the Art Cinema, said.
The operators of Westates Theaters, who also own four other Cache Valley movie theaters, often got requests to carry many smaller films that often did not appeal to a broad enough audience to play in mainstream theaters. They believed an art theater relatively close to campus could succeed in a similar way as the Tower Theater in Salt Lake City and other art theaters near college populations.
Richard Davidson, city manager of Westates Theaters, says the operators “wanted to give people the opportunity to see the movies that normally you would have to wait until DVD to see or drive down to Salt Lake City or Ogden.”
The local management, Westates management and customer requests all collaborate deciding which films play at the cinema. Davidson said customer e-mails are one of the primary ways they decide what movies to take. He said they welcome requests and suggestions for films at westatestheater@aol.com. If they get multiple requests for a film, he says, they try their best to show it, although it often takes longer to get some films because of the limited availability of smaller film releases.
While mainstream movies typically play in many local multiplexes at once, the Art Cinema is the exclusive carrier of its mostly independent films. At times, the management gets large independent releases that may not appeal to broad audiences, such as Mel Gibson’s “The Passion,” which played in sold-out theaters, or “March of the Penguins,” which opened at the Art Cinema before moving into Logan multiplexes.
Davidson said he enjoys the passion for movies the Art Cinema’s regular patrons have.
“They are very knowledgeable about performances, writing and directing,” he said. Baer said the regular patrons often make up a vocal group that stays in the lobby after the movie and discuss it among themselves or with the theater employees. He said they have been very supportive and appreciative of having the Art Cinema in Logan.
Davidson said USU students and faculty members have always been a large part of the Art Cinema’s audience, which has prompted the theater to offer a student discount.
Baer said the “younger crowd often looks for the edgier movies” the cinema plays.
The Logan Art Cinema is located at 785 N. Main Street and features movies nightly. Regular ticket prices are $6.50 and $4.50 for USU students with a student ID. The theater is currently showing “Curse of the Golden Flower,” an Asian martial arts epic directed by Yimou Zhang, who also directed previous martial arts epics “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers.”
-tliljegren@cc.usu.eduARt