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AN UPDATE ON TH£ N£U LOCAL THEATER
/ rthouse cinephites who've waited since
A the announcement of Cine, an honest*
II to-goodness downtown movie theater
profiled in Flagpole in Nov. 2004, will have to sit
tight a few more months. The woman behind the
project, Brigitta Hangartner, has been busy get
ting Cine ready, but the production hasn't been
as smooth as she originally expected.
Construction on Cine was originally scheduled
to start in February of 2005, but nothing hap
pened until December. Hangartner reports that it
was delayed essentially because the theater is an
ambitious project. She and her crew needed to
redesign the floor plan of the old Snow Tire recap
plant at 234 West Hancock Ave. Construction
crews are extending the back of the building to
house Cine's two theaters, and this will allow
Hangartner to offer 4,000 square feet in the
front for another business.
Problems aside, Cine should open in
September or October of this year. The building's
facade will keep the old plant's garage door aes
thetic, and the door will open to reveal a hallway
to Cine's cafe, bar and box office. The indus
trial-looking interior will feature a skylight over
the foyer and environmentally-sound kitchen
fixtures, toilets and lights. Hangartner will even
install air conditioners that pull in fresh air
from outside instead of recycling the air in the
theaters.
“That was very important to me, because I
find when you sit in a theater for two to three
hours, and this is all the air you get to breathe,
it has to be fresh air. 1 ’ she says. "People should
come out of the movie... if they're dazed at all,
it should be from the film and not because they
were breathing bad air."
Making these environmental choices isn't
cheap, and comes In second to Hangartner's de
cision to keep the historic took of the building.
To make Cin£ truly green, Hangartner says, she
would have had to hire a consultant. "It gets
prohibitively expensive to get all the energy-sav
ing equipment and then to find somebody who
can implement it and then to find somebody to
supervise that it has been implemented right,"
she says. "I would hope that someday there
would be a position in the city government
know about cinema, and are hoping to see some
new things that they have not been able to see."
Cinq's main attraction, Hangartner says, will
be the quality of the presentation. "It will be a
state-of-the-art theater," she says. "That includes
the quality of the projection and the sound and
the screening rooms." And in this age of DVDs,
she points out that seeing movies in any theater
still has its advantages over home viewing, no
matter the size of your TV screen. "Going to the
movies," she says, "is a different experience alto
gether. You choose a film and you go see it. It's
an event. It's not like going to the video store
and picking something and maybe having time
to watch it tonight or not. It's something you
where a person qives you advice on how you can
build a green building for free. At this point,
you have to buy this advice. The historic and the
green approach don't go together so well in a
relatively small building."
In the way of historic preservation,
Hangartner is keeping and renovating the current
the independent Dobie Theatre in Austin, TX.
Hangartner learns about potential films to show
from magazines, the Internet, or from see
ing them elsewhere. She recently traveled to
Zurich, where she was born, and saw U-Carmen
e-Khoyelitsho, the Carmen story set in a South
African township, as well as Somersault, a com-
ing-of-age film about a young
woman in Australia. She'd also
like to show the documentary
Edge Codes.com. a film about
editing.
"I would also like to show
films about making film, be
cause we have a big filmmaker
Not long ago. this weedy back lot held little promise ot cultural
enrichment for downtown Athens
exterior, and keeping the pressed-tin- ceiling in
side. Still, she says. "We were able to put in this
new part in the back, which I think would be of
interest to people in downtown thinking about
whether they want this to be an historic dis
trict—what you can actually do with a building,
and have it still be considered historic."
Cine will have two theaters (seating 135 and
107 people, the larger with a stage) and will
always be screening between two and four films.
Each regularly scheduled film will run for at
least a week, and there will be children's shows
on weekends. Hangartner says she is looking
into the possibility of doing retrospectives and
is excited to invite filmmakers to speak about
their films. She hopes to fit in well with the
Athens film community, and with groups like
Film::Athens and the Robert Osborne Classic Film
Festival organizers.
Cin6 films will be selected by Hangartner and
her partners on the programming board: UGA
professors Nathaniel Kohn and Richard Neupert,
as well as Paul Strawser, a former manager of
Taking advantage of a natural slope. Cinfrs two theaters will be built in the extension at the back of the former recap plant.
community here in Athens," she says. "I think
[Cin§] will add to the cultural scene in Athens.
The film arts are only emergent right now. I hope
it will speak to a broad audience. I hope we will
reach young adults and people who have been
going to the cinema all their adult lives and who
decide to do and you might go with friends and
meet them before the show or afterwards and
talk about the film. And some of these films you
might never find in the video store."
Sebastian Blanco sqb.geo@yahoo.com
Project Safe and VDay UGA Present The
VAGINA Monologues
Tickets $15
Available at Frontier
193 E. Clayton o.., Downtown
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Milledce Ave h lints,
Project Safe Thrift Store
Bell's Shopping Center.
Hawthorne Ave
Or at the Door
Sponsored by
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and Managed
Medical Transport
Co-sponsored bv
UGA Performing Arts
100% of proceeds benefit
Project Safe. Inc., a non
profit organization that
provides shelter, support,
and resources to women
and children affected by
domestic violence.
February 10 - 12
UGA Chapel on North Campus
8:00 p.m.
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FEBRUARY 8,2006 FLAGPOLE.COM 7
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