Hyland feeds film fanatics
By Dale Carruthers
dcarrut4@uwo.ca
As Marie Knapflar walks through the front doors of the Hyland Cinema and into the brightly lit lobby, she looks around wide-eyed. It has been 40 years since she last stepped foot inside this theatre.
Knapflar takes a moment and breathes in the nostalgia. The last time she was in the Hyland, she brought her children to see The Sound of Music.
While standing in the lobby she scans her surroundings and makes an observation.
“It looks the same,” she says with a smile.
And while Knapflar may be right about the lobby looking the same as it did decades ago, much has changed inside of London’s oldest cinema. For starters, the 414-seat theatre boasts the largest screen in the city and a state-of-the-art sound system. And it’s this combination of past charm mixed with present technology that makes the Hyland unique.
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Photo by Dale Carruthers
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| The Hyland Cinema, at 240 Wharncliffe Rd. S., originally opened in the 1930s. |
Bill Ratcliffe and his wife drive to London at least once a month to watch a film at the Hyland, despite living 40 minutes away in Woodstock.
“It’s homey. It’s more personal,” says Ratcliffe. “It takes me back to when I was 14 or 15.”
For Ratcliffe, the atmosphere at the Hyland is just one of the reasons he makes the monthly journey into the city – the other reason: great films.
“It seems to play movies that the wife and I are more interested in,” says Ratcliffe, who was walking out of the theatre after seeing Milk.
The Hyland plays many arts and foreign flicks that aren’t shown in any other theatres in London. While the larger movie theatres show the usual Hollywood fare more likely to draw big crowds, the Hyland focuses on alternative film.
“I think we are doing something completely different,” says owner Ali Adlan, who gets exclusive rights to many of the films he shows.
For Adlan, a self-proclaimed cinephile, his favourite part of the job is looking for movie reviews to use for his website – and of course, he gets to watch every movie shown at his theatre.
“Sometimes I see the films in bits and pieces. I go in for half an hour or an hour,” says Adlan who can often be seen standing at the back of the theatre during screenings.
London Free Press arts and entertainment columnist James Reaney says everyone needs to visit the Hyland.
“It gives you a feeling of being part of the world, too. Seeing a movie with an audience is a shared experience. You laugh together as an audience. There are movies from around the world that play the Hyland that don’t play anywhere else in London,” says Reaney.
For example, the Hyland is the only theatre in London showing Steven Soderbergh’s two-part epic Che despite director Soderbergh’s popularity and Benicio Del Toro starring as the famous revolutionary. And earlier this month the Hyland was the only cinema where viewers could see Oscar-nominated Waltz with Bashir.
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Photo by Dale Carruthers |
| Hyland owner Ali Adlan shows alternative films such as Martin Scorsese’s Gomorrah. |
“They seem to pick very good movies,” says Reaney. “Even if you don’t know much about them (the movies) you can trust them.”
Reaney, who is vice-chair of the London Heritage Council, an organization committed to supporting heritage and cultural organization in London, grew up in Old South and has been watching movies at the Hyland since the 1960s.
The Hyland, located at 240 Wharncliffe Rd. S., has 10,000 members – many of whom are from Old South, says Adlan.
“Most of our members are from Wortley Village,” says Adlan. “They just walk up.”
The Hyland sells annual memberships for $10 and offers members a discounted ticket price of $6.50 instead of $9 for non-members.
Adlan and his wife Moira opened the Hyland in 2004 after checking out other potential Canadian cities including Ottawa. They felt London had both the population and the need for an arts theatre. And with the then-recent demise of the New Yorker – London’s previous arts theatre – Adlan thought London was the perfect location.
He found a potential home for his theatre – the old Hyland building, originally called the Elmwood when it opened in 1933 and showed second-run movies. It was renamed the Hyland in 1959 and began screening first-run arts and British films. The cinema closed its doors and stopped showing movies in 1989 because it couldn’t compete with other movie theatres in London. The building was used as a church for a few years in the 1990s.
Adlan loved the location and the building. He decided to name the theatre the Hyland because it was recognizable and kept the tradition of the old theatre alive.
Adlan says there have been many challenges since opening, especially the first two years.
“It was a very difficult time,” says Adlan who sells tickets, runs the concession stand and decides which movies to screen. “I do everything.”
But Adlan started showing a wider variety of films – including many Canadian movies – and doing educational screenings for elementary and high schools. And business started to pick up in the third year.
As for the future of the Hyland, Adlan says he’s considering splitting the theatre into two so he can show more movies. The question of whether or not London can support an alternative cinema seems to have finally been answered.
“London has 350,000 people,” says Adlan. “They can support an arts theatre, but I think it needs time.”
