2020 marks 25 years since Wānaka institution, Cinema Paradiso was founded by three film-loving locals tired of travelling to Queenstown to watch a movie, and keen to make some money to attend the Sundance Film Festival.

In a short film produced by Wānaka production company The Film Crew, ‘After 25 Years’, now Queenstown Lakes Deputy Mayor Calum MacLeod recalled how he, wife Andrea Riley and friend Brian Hildreth travelled to Dunedin and Auckland to collect a screen and 35mm carbon arc film projector. They received a crash course in projecting over five days, before starting weekend film screenings in the old town hall in September 1995.

MacLeod told the Wānaka Sun he learned “by making mistakes,” recalling a showing of ‘Free Willy’ on a particularly hot day, when the reel seized and the audience looked on in dismay as the frame of film melted and the orca appeared to explode mid-jump before their eyes.

It was in this first location that two of the cinema’s traditions were established. Rather than use the uncomfortable town hall seats, visitors began bringing their couches from home, and so the Paradiso - well-known today for its array of seating, from sofas to cars and train seats - started setting up couches on the town hall floor. The ritual of an intermission, which gave viewers the chance to socialise, discuss the movie and enjoy a cookie, has also been carried through 25 years.

That said, a lot has changed since the town hall was demolished. The cinema has had two new homes (the roundabout where the Bottle-O liquor store now stands, and the old Catholic Church on Brownston Street, where it remains today) and gone automatic, bidding a reluctant farewell to manual carbon arc projectors - the last place in the southern hemisphere to do so. MacLeod said he loved the art of projecting; the ceremony of changing, rewinding and splicing the film, and the regularity with which the projectors broke down. 

Today, films are distributed on a reusable hard drive about the size of one reel, where each film used to take up a whole box, and they have much better sound quality. MacLeod was particularly “chuffed” that the sound system installed by Peter Jackson for the first showing of Lord of the Rings in Wellington’s Embassy Cinema now resided in Paradiso’s screen one. 

But for MacLeod, the tradition of the shared cinema experience remains sacred - and it’s what keeps people coming back to the Paradiso despite the development of the internet, video games and Netflix, all of which have threatened to “kill” cinema over the years. 

“It’s the same reason you still have thousands of people showing up to watch a rugby game,” said MacLeod. “It’s the social, human component.” 

He believed there would always be a place for cinema. And although, like many businesses in town, the Paradiso had been “put back about a decade” by the Covid-19 pandemic, he remained hopeful for the future - and looked forward to a ‘25+1’ celebration in a (hopefully) more normal 2021.

Read edition 1004 of the Wānaka Sun here.