The Medicine Hat News is recognizing Luke Fandrich the 2024 Newsmaker of the Year for sharing the story of the Monarch Theatre, Canada’s oldest purpose-built movie theatre, with the world through his documentary Your Cinema Needs You.--SUPPLIED PHOTO
bmiller@medicinehatnews.com
The story of Canada’s oldest surviving purpose-built movie theatre that opened its doors on Dec. 21, 1911, in a growing community located in southern Alberta, has been shared with the world through the lens of the 2024 Medicine Hat News Newsmaker of the Year.
Luke Fandirch’s documentary Your Cinema Needs You shares the stories of the people who worked, attended and grew up with the Monarch Theatre, now standing 113 years old.
It unravels the theatre’s more than century long history, its transition from silent films to Hollywood blockbusters and how the building managed to survive, and now once again begin to thrive, in the heart of the city.
Due to the film’s overwhelming positive feedback from the community following its launch in the Monarch one year ago, Fandrich, the founder of Editing Luke, began a 10-month international film festival tour, receiving a total of 25 festival nominations and 14 wins, including eight in the category for ‘best documentary.’
Audiences at film festivals in more than 30 cities across 12 counties, including China, Sweden and Germany, watched the tale of a small theatre in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and how it evolved and impacted the community.
A piano was commonplace when silent movies dominated the screens in the 1920s. However it wouldn’t take long before theatres would have to adapt to better production, sound and colour. By the late 1930s movie theatres around the world were premiering productions, including films the Wizard of Oz.
Similar to Dorothy’s connection with home, audiences of Your Cinema Needs You resonated globally with that connection to growing up and watching a film at the local theatre and the story of how movie theatres have evolved and could become a relic of our past.
“There were a lot of little moments, people who had worked there previously, memories of going to Saturday matinees and all the minutiae of just growing up with a movie theatre before streaming,” said Fandrich. “Especially when it wasn’t always easy. You wanted to see the new movie, you had to go to a movie theatre, it’s an event and it wasn’t uncommon for a movie theatre to be sold out and full on Friday and Saturday night.”
Rewinding the reel
The idea for the documentary emerged during the COVID pandemic. The local filmmaker began production in 2022 after securing funding from TELUS Originals.
The project involved extensive community engagement, dozens of interviews, archival research and digging through the past of the history of an iconic building needing new ownership and renovations if it were to remain operating in the Hat.
Fandrich started his research by reaching out to the community through his social media and local news outlets, looking to speak with members of the community who visited, worked or had a connection to the Monarch.
“People who have the story of going to the movie theatre when they were kids or worked as an usher or as a projectionist, you kind of get this gamut of all these different people.” said Fandrich. “But then I had to start distilling … Because I could take all these interesting little reference pieces, but I still needed the history, and so I started to dig deeper.”
As he searched through more than a century of archives, photos, artifacts, old newspapers and advertisements, Fandrich began connecting moments of the theatre’s historic timeline that have never been formally documented.
“I was using all the little scraps that people had kind of left before, and then all the oral history I collected to sort of map out what the timeline was.”
Fandrich was able to create the Monarch’s narrative arc and along the way discovered how the Monarch survived when so many other theatres cut the curtains and went out of business.
“Sound came in at the same time, television came in at the same time, home video came in at the same time around the world. All movie theatres were dealing with those same challenges, and it was interesting having Medicine Hat be the bubble to look at the broader story.”
The purchase of the theatre in 2023 by the Monarch 1911 Society, a non-profit founded by local members of all Rotary clubs, sparked new life into the theatre that has been well-preserved over time. Previously the theatre was closed for a two-year lull while the city sought a buyer.
“It wasn’t in ruins, the equipment was all still there, the seats were all still there. Everything was still in working condition, obviously the theatre still needed some TLC and some structural work and electrics and all that, but there was something immediately to save, as opposed to so many other theatres.”
Fandrich captured the renovations of the cherished venue throughout 2023 and after several months of researching, filming and editing, he premiered his film inside the very same movie theatre it is based on.
“The idea that my conclusion of the documentary was about the premiere happening, and that when people were sitting in the movie theatre, the very ending of the documentary says, “and for the first film to play in the reopening of the Monarch Theatre is the documentary. It was a self fulfilling prophecy, because until that had actually happened, the ending wasn’t true.”
That’s a wrap
Due to the film’s overwhelming feedback from the community, Fandrich held a total of 16 local screenings for the film between December 2023 to February 2024, far exceeding his expectations.
“The excitement and the sentiment surrounding it, I could predict it, that people would have been that enthusiastic about it … to have it be this indie documentary about the Monarch Theatre and have people turn out where there’s not an empty seat in the house, that’s incredible and I think it shows the value of telling these local stories.
“I want people to not just love the Monarch Theatre, at the end of this, I want people to love going to the love theatre again, whether it’s the Monarch, whether it’s any of the theatres you grew up with, I don’t want to lose that. In such an interesting time period, there’s still an opportunity to save these places.”
Early in 2025, Your Cinema Needs You is expected to premiere through TELUS Originals and will be streamed online.
