Michael Moynihan: Look at the big picture as Cork City is left without a cinema temporarily

I don’t have any apologies on hand for those ignoramuses, a breed of people who deserve a bespoke circle of hell along with usurers and queue-jumpers, but I didn’t realise that my complaints would coincide with the closing of a cinema, however temporary.

Just a couple of days after my outburst, Jack White of this parish wrote: “Cork City’s Gate Cinema on North Main St is to close for several months for a major refurbishment’. The cinema announced it will close from Monday and will not reopen until autumn as it transitions under new ownership.

“Once opened, the cinema will be known as The Arc Cinema, with the new owners promising 'a new look, new feel, and new experience'.”

To clarify: I had nothing to do with this development, and I have certainly not suggested the refurbishment should include cattle prods, to be handed out to patrons keen to encourage ludramans in neighbouring seats to turn off their devices.

The good news, of course, is that this is a temporary rather than a permanent closure. At a time when large swathes of the city look down at heel, or just derelict, or both, it’s encouraging to see that the corner of the North Main St looming over the North Channel will be perked up and rejuvenated.

In the meantime, however, it means that the entire city is without a cinema from Blackpool to Mahon, with the two cineplexes in those areas the only oases available to film lovers. 

Yes, there’s the occasional screening in the Triskel, and presumably there are cinematic outbreaks still in UCC, though probably nothing on a par with the two-quid ‘screenings’ which took place on a Friday evening ... well, enough about that, for all our sakes.

I don’t raise this to make a plea for the cineastes of Cork to be accommodated immediately as a matter of urgency, but the lack of cinemas in the city is noteworthy for a couple of reasons.

For one, it means deprivation for a section of the population which is already short of entertainment options. The cinema is tailor-made for the teen cohort which is too young for the pub — legally — but too old for the various kids’ adventure centres dotted around town. For them, the choices are pretty few and far between as it stands, and removing even one compresses their options even more.

For another, it removes another reason to go into town, and I use that term advisedly.

I noted over the weekend that illustrator Jason O’Gorman, who has featured in this column in the past, pinpointed the idea of town precisely with a map. It showed the county of Cork, the city of Cork, and then the tiny sliver in the centre of the city universally agreed to be ‘town’. As in, ‘going to town’ (also acceptable: ‘going in to town’).

While I’m sure this idea exists in various forms in other cities around Ireland, and further afield, in Cork going to town means, in large measure, going somewhere to access goods and services unavailable elsewhere.

Like the cinema. However, if there is no cinema remaining in town, then that’s no longer necessary. This is unfortunate, because going to town has the potential to open up new possibilities and unexpected vistas.

If you have no reason to go in to town to see Barbie or Oppenheimer, then it’s unlikely that you’ll end up in town 20 minutes early. That in turn means you won’t find an unfamiliar coffee shop in which to wait. Or that part of the quay wall where you can lean over and admire the light on the river. Or bump into a pal you haven’t seen in years who just happened to be in town themselves.

A good deal of the discussion about the city centre and getting people in there focuses on the specific attractions of that part of the city; perhaps more should be made of the general attractions of the city centre and of the likelihood of interesting encounters once you get in there.

The cinema has always been part of that, dating back to the time when lengthy queues along St Patrick's Street and the Grand Parade were a regular feature of weekend evenings. By definition, having hundreds of cinemagoers entering and exiting cinemas meant people meeting, chatting, and interacting, and helped to create and maintain the sense of an urban centre meant for people.

This isn’t the first time that Cork has seen its cinemas vanish, of course. At the start of the 80s the city centre was sprinkled with cinemas, from the Palace on MacCurtain St to the Classic on Washington St, large-scale ventures such as the Pavilion, where Golden Discs now is, and far smaller havens such as the Lee on Winthrop St, and the Cameo on Military Rd, which ran one particular film featuring a named night nurse for about seven years.

By the end of the 80s, only one was left — the Capitol, which was transformed into a multiplex.

This is a commentary of sorts on Cork in the 80s when the city was savaged by unemployment — and as a metric to indicate the evaporation of disposable income, it’s difficult to beat. It shows that the closing of a cinema can tell us something about the economic climate that may not be obvious from bald reports on the rate of inflation.

What precisely it tells us is not always clear, of course. For instance, there is a cineplex in Clonakilty, but none in Carrigaline, yet (according to the 2016 census) the population of the West Cork town is only one-third that of Carrigaline.

There are other pressures as well, obviously enough. Consumer habits and appetites don’t remain constant or we’d still be packing venues to watch bear-baiting for entertainment. 

The rise of the VCR no doubt had an effect on those 80s cinemas, just as the advent of television in the 60s made serious inroads into the large crowds which had been trekking into town for the cinema in the previous decades. The current fondness for streaming services shows no signs of abating, and that in turn eats away at cinema revenues and attendances as well.

At least the cinema at the North Gate Bridge is to re-open soon as the Arc — extra credit to those involved for the subliminal nod to the old Arcadia with that name, by the way — so there will be films to see within the city limits again soon enough. That means those pesky teens can be accommodated, and there’s a chance you’ll meet people you haven’t seen in ages when you’re buying your popcorn.

Decide for yourself whether you want to bring a cattle prod.