The excellent Cinéma du Parc and other NICE members (and NICE itself) are featured in this new Globe and Mail piece from Josh O’Kane: A landmark donation from Denis Villeneuve reveals the philanthropy gap for indie cinemas.

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Montreal’s Cinéma du Parc was already in the middle of a $1.4-million renovation last summer when Quebec-born blockbuster filmmaker Denis Villeneuve swept in with a major donation it hadn’t budgeted for. Now, the 49-year-old mall-basement theatre can plan for more improvements to entice its moviegoers for years to come.

The modernization was completed late last summer: red drapes evoking David Lynch’s Twin Peaks adorn lobby walls, with lounge seating installed for customers to chat and sip drinks before or after showings. Staff installed new seats in the biggest of its three theatres. The snack bars and washrooms have been upgraded, and behind-the-scenes infrastructure is refreshed.

Neither Cinéma du Parc nor Villeneuve have revealed the size of the Dune director’s gift, which arrived through the Conseil des Arts de Montréal’s fiscal sponsorship program. But the cinema’s executive director, Roxanne Sayegh, said it’s substantial enough to help the non-profit organization that runs the theatrebegin its next round of upgrades, to screens and sound systems, which could cost half a million dollars. “Investing in a cinema when you’re able to, before waiting until people are not coming, is important,” Sayegh said in a recent interview in the upgraded lobby.

Few independent Canadian cinemas, however, actually benefit from these kinds of high-profile donations. Institutions in other corners of the cultural world, such as non-profit theatres and galleries, often rely on moneyed benefactors to steady their operations. But save for occasional campaigns, smaller independents can rarely rely on such large-scale generosity, even in the face of restrictions from film distributors and the sheer monopoly of Cineplex, which said last year that it controlled 74 per cent of Canada’s box-office share in 2023.

While some independentsare for-profit companies, there are many non-profits, and they’re increasingly evolving into community-focused, artistically driven institutions – the kind that might attract philanthropy in other art forms. Andyet “we don’t see them as a place to donate to,” said Sonya William, director of the Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors, which represents staff from 145 cinema organizations across the country.

Though William added that the sector is seeing something of a “repertory revival” after pandemic lockdowns, as crowds flock to see exclusive, art house or cult screenings in the communal environment of a theatre, this enthusiasm doesn’t always cover cinemas’ mounting costs. In a 2024 survey of 67 NICE members, 60 per cent said they were operating at a loss, with some suggesting they’d need as much as $50,000 per year in order to stay open for the next three years.

Cineplex often gets exclusive rights to play new movies in a certain geographic radius, preventing others from booking big box-office draws. Independents also have to contend with studios demanding multi-week, every-showtime runs for hot new movies, which are impossible for small cinemas with few screens, or those in smaller communities, to maintain. “You talk to American independents, and Barbie was their biggest film” in 2023, William said. “A lot of our members didn’t get that film for months.”

Cinéma du Parc’s latest lifeline wasn’t actually the first from Villeneuve. He’d made another undisclosed-size donation to its sister theatre, Cinéma Beaubien, in 2023, but chose to keep it private. This time, Sayegh convinced him to make it public to encourage further generosity to independent cinemas. “We need leaders,” she said, “because cinema in Quebec is not an artistic discipline with a culture of philanthropy.”

That cultural trend may exist across Canada, but so, too, does the benefit of a celebrity endorsement. When staff at east Vancouver’s Rio Theatre found out their landlord wanted to sell the property in 2018, they were offered the chance to buy it – and quickly earned support for their campaign from local celebrity Ryan Reynolds and an in-kind contribution from Vancouver Film School dropout Kevin Smith.

Celebrity support can “validate and legitimize” a fundraising campaign, said Rachel Fox, the Rio’s senior programmer. “It fuels the fire.” Rio management eventually set up a parallel non-profit to handle donations while recruiting investors for the business itself, and now owns the building.

Sponsorship and philanthropy have long buoyed the biggest names in Canadian cinema, such as the Toronto International Film Festival and – though not as much recently – Hot Docs. But even for beloved local cinemas with track records of community support, there are limits.

Many theatres are leased, leaving them at the whims of landlords and markets – such as the Revue Cinema in Toronto’s west end. Its screenings are often sold out, but with its fate left up to five-year leases, its operators were nearly locked out last year after a months-long dispute between the landlord and board that was finally resolved in September.

Eleanor Stacey converted the Civic Theatre in Nelson, B.C. into a charity when she took it over in 2014 to get access to grant funding, hoping to eventually convert from a one-screen theatre to three screens when the organization became self-sustaining. Her team raised $3.3-million of the expected $4.2-million project cost from the community by 2020, hoping to use a line of credit from the municipality to cover the rest.

But then COVID-19 arrived, costs ballooned, and then, in 2023, engineers discovered that the nearly nine-decade-old building’s wooden trusses weren’t up to code – forcing the owners to clear out the theatre to reinforce them, sending box-office revenue plunging and delaying the planned renovation even further.

Stacey estimates the Civic Theatre will need to raise another $2.5-million over the next two years to cross the finish line, including to cover expenses that have piled up with its ongoing closure. She hopes the Nelson community will rally.

“After more than a decade of imagining the renewed Civic Theatre and with so many unexpected challenges along the way, I think our community really deserves to walk into a fully renovated and renewed venue,” she says.