Patrons at the Kingsway Theatre last night got a first hand encore of the growing tensions between theatre partner/investor, Rick Ross, and management.

On a routine visit to monitor the theatre operation Ross paused briefly in the theatre auditorium, around 4:15PM, well into the 3PM showing. "I had only been in the theatre a couple of minutes when I was approached by Rui [Pereira]", said Ross, "and without even a word, he grabbed me and began punching me among patrons viewing the playing feature."

Ross continued, "The incident was horrifying. He continued the violent assault out into the street as I tried to retreat from his attack. I don't have a clear recollection of what happened at that point as Rui was strangling me with my tie. I do recall I was struggling for air face down on the pavement of Bloor St. as he continued choking me."

Ross felt fortunate that a local store operator, Robert Chin from Excalibur Comics came to his rescue, "I truly believe Rui had lost complete control at that point and would have continued until I was unconscious, or worse."

Dismayed by police reaction to the event, Ross said, "The entire event was very surreal. The police and ambulance did eventually arrive but no report was taken from me. Instead, I was advised to never return to the theatre. I was clearly beaten and yet I got virtually no support."

Mr. Ross was taken by ambulance to Toronto Western Hospital. He was released Friday morning after undergoing a facial CT scan and treatment for numerous head injuries.

This event again calls into question the continued operation of the theatre as its largest investor and majority partner is now reconsidering his involvement.

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It was a promotion for horror movies at The Kingsway Theatre, but Terror On The Kingsway became all too real Friday afternoon.

Rui Pereira, acting General Manager of The Kingsway, physically assaulted Rick Ross, the majority investor in the theatre, on Bloor Street in front of the theatre. According to Mr. Ross, "My company, SwitchWorks Technologies, provided the majority of financing and labour to renovate The Kingsway. I came by to pick up the tools and equipment that are still here from the renovation. Rui [Pereira] flew into a rage, told me to get out, and physically wrestled me out the front door."

Mr. Ross went on to say that Mr. Pereira has treated the renovation and operation of the theatre more like a sole proprietorship than the partnership that it is. The three partners are Mr. Ross, Mr. Pereira, and Ivan Martinovic, a local architect.

"He [Mr. Pereira] changed the locks, denies me access, and has attempted to seize control of the company and operations. As far as I can tell, he's personally running the theatre twelve hours a day, seven days a week. We've been communicating through lawyers, but it looks like he's using the legal system to try and delay resolution to the partnership differences indefinitely," said Mr. Ross.

Mr. Ross explained that the altercation lasted for approximately half an hour with Mr. Pereira coming outside repeatedly to verbally assault him, threaten him with a crowd control stand, kick, push, and punch him. Mr. Ross said Mr. Pereira claimed to have called the police. "I said, 'Good. I'm waiting for the police.'," said Mr. Ross. When the police did not arrive, Mr. Ross filed an incident report against Mr. Pereira at 22 Division, with assault charges pending.

"I'm now considering shutting down the operation," said Mr. Ross, "I can't see the partnership being salvageable and I'm very concerned about Rui's behaviour and his ability to maintain this kind of pace much longer. The reputation of the theatre and the viability of the business are at stake. Projects like this are only sustainable through partnerships within the business and within the community. There is no partnership left in this project."

Mr. Ross said the altercation was witnessed by an employee of The Kingsway, an employee of SwitchWorks, many people on the street, and people in neighbouring businesses who came outside to see what was going on.

Mr. Pereira was not available for comment.

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Consider it a second run at life for a former second-run theatre.

More than two years after it was believed to be shuttered for good, the Kingsway theatre is up, running and screening films, although this resurrection is banking on newer movies as its strategy moving forward.

"We are no longer a repertory theatre," says Rui Pereira, the project manager who spearheaded the theatre's return. "What we're trying to do is run as many first-run movies, or films that are currently playing, as possible, and holding them for a longer period of time, so typically for a week to two weeks. This way, we have more exclusive films as opposed to trying to compete with a lot of the films that have already gone to DVD."

Officially, the Kingsway, on Bloor St. W. just west of Royal York Rd., reopened on Jan. 2, but Pereira has been working on getting it back in shape since August. It's not finished yet, as there are still some soundproofing and wall treatments to be done, but the goal is to keep the special feel of the heritage building.

"It's a different experience. Not to put down the multiplexes, because I enjoy going to them too, but this is different. You're time-travelling back to the 1930s. This film theatre was built in 1939 and it's just a different feel. There's not a lot of single screen theatres left, and this theatre is part of the history of this area and of Toronto."

Pereira is obviously passionate about going to movies and has worked in theatres for much of his life, including the Eglinton Theatre.

That was his favourite theatre, he said, but it is now run as an event space.

He also studied and worked as an architect, so the chance to combine both of his passions at the Kingsway was an opportunity he couldn't pass up.

While much of the heavy lifting has been done in restoring the venue to its former glory, Pereira says the goal now is make sure that there's a varied amount of programming, and to spread the word about what's happening at the theatre.

"I think they're pretty much amazed in the neighbourhood, because the theatre sat closed for almost 2 1/2 years. They really thought that was it. It was over," he says.

"But now people here are very supportive of the theatre being reopened. We have people coming in all the time, complimenting us and, for the most part, it has just been a case of being surprised. They didn't expect it to come back."

 

The curtain has risen once again on the two years-darkened Kingsway Theatre.

Newly renovated, the historic neighbourhood movie house opened to little fanfare last Friday with two critically acclaimed films, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Rachel Getting Married, which ran through yesterday.

Tonight, recently released films Four Christmases (7 p.m. and matinees at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday) and The Spirit (9 p.m.) open for a week's run.

Opening night was quiet, in part, because renovations are not quite complete.

Topping the list of outstanding repairs is fixing the wiring and fixtures for the letters K, I and Y in the cinema's original neon-green marquee. Raccoons gnawed the marquee's wiring during the theatre's 30-month closure.

Demolition and renovations began in August.

"The theatre was in rough shape before it closed, and became worse after it closed," general manager Rui Pereira said at the theatre Wednesday, as curious passersby peeked through the front window.

"All the carpets had to be removed. The women's bathroom was completely unusable. There was a bad odor throughout the building."

New front doors and a candy bar are on order. Finishing touches include polishing the lobby's Terrazzo floors to a high gloss, and installing sound panels on the theatre walls to reduce echo.

New seats, installed before the closure, have been reupholstered.

New additions include wheelchair access, now available in the theatre's back row, and the construction of an accessible washroom.

The company behind the reno is Whip TV, a subsidiary of Toronto-based SwitchWorks Technologies Inc.

The parent company hopes the Kingsway's revival will not only raise awareness of Whip TV and its three-part home entertainment and communications package, but bring Hollywood blockbusters, as well as smaller art films, to the Bloor Street West and Royal York Road neighbourhood.

Matinees, likely older Disney films, are expected to run regularly next summer.

"People were disappointed when the theatre closed. I think there will be a lot of interest in it reopening," Pereira said, adding the location is prime, nestled in a residential neighbourhood, as well as a popular walking area for shops and restaurants.

The Festival chain of theatres, including Kingsway, the Revue and the Royal, closed in 2006, following the death in 2004 of owner Peter McQuillan. The Royal on College Street was reopened, with a new editing and sound-mixing facility in September, 2006, while the Revue on Roncesvalles Avenue reopened as a non-profit, community-run theatre in September, 2007.

Gone is the Kingsway's former memberships. Ticket admission is $10 (adults), and $8 (seniors 65-plus and children 14 and younger).

Pereira said he isn't concerned about Cineplex Odeon's nearby Queensway theatre. "We're not competing with Cineplex's Queensway theatre. This is a different experience that goes back to community theatre. This is one of few of them left."

The film industry, including theatres, seem immune to the economic downturn, Pereira said, as patrons look for an escape, as well as less-expensive entertainment.

Pereira said he expects to be screening first-run films later this month.

 

After a year of Whip TV’s cryptic advertisements that hinted at it, the Kingsway Theatre will officially reopen this Friday after hosting a special sneak peek and open house (featuring a free screening of Spike Milligan’s 1962 comedy The Postman’s Knock) last night. The art deco theatre, located at 3030 Bloor Street West near Royal York Road, opened in 1939, but has been closed since 2006. Before the doors were open to the public last night, Torontoist got taken on a tour by the theatre's new manager, Rui Pereira.

Switchworks Technology, a local high-speed internet provider and the company behind Whip TV, decided to lease the theatre and run movies again in an effort to promote its internet, phone, and web TV services. "It was a good opportunity," explained Pereira. "We want to use the theatre to promote our triple play product through screen ads and flyers."

Though renovations have been ongoing for four months, a lot of work still needs to be done. "We still have to get a new candy table, new doors, and a surround sound system," said Pereira. "But most of the equipment is original." The famous old marquee—the most recognizable part of the façade—will even be put back into use, though it still requires repairs. "When we started the renovations we found a nest of raccoons living in there," chuckled Pereira. "They chewed through all the wires." The marquee will even feature all of the original lettering (with the exception of three letters that were beyond repair), which Pereira and his staff have painstakingly reassembled.

Unlike the old Kingsway, the newly renovated theatre will not be showing second-run releases. "The Rogers [Video] across the street can do that," said Pereira. "We’re going to be showing fresh stuff, but we don’t have anything planned after the first week. We hope to eventually show first run releases and children’s matinees during the day." Ticket prices will be $10 for adults and $8 for children and seniors.

The theatre will officially reopen with The Boy in Striped Pajamas, the story of a friendship set between the wires of a Nazi concentration camp, and Rachel Getting Married, the TIFF-debuted tale of a daughter returning from rehab for a family wedding—a tad depressing for the grand reopening of an iconic Etobicoke landmark. But things are looking significantly more sunny for the new year: a Bloor Cinema–style theatre is just what the west end needs.

Photos by Stephen Michalowicz/Torontoist

Today on the Scroll: More updates from the future — of this column, website, and entire multi-platform media enterprise — with a peek behind the curtain of one of those surviving neighbourhood movie theatres that Toronto only gets all sentimental over the moment they risk being closed. In this case, almost two-and-a-half years after showing its last pictures as a repertory theatre, the Kingsway plans to buck the second-run default in favour of a true throwback: new movies, just slightly off the beaten path.

A new sound system is being installed, amongst other aesthetic improvements, with the hope of re-opening later this month.

Rui Pereira spent about a dozen years working in a local corporate bijous that predated the multiplex, starting as a 19-year-old in 1986 at the Showcase on Yonge south of Bloor — once and again named the New Yorker, now the tourist-trapping live musical Panasonic Theatre. Later, he did time at the Cineplex Odeon Humber in Bloor West Village — closed in 2003, waiting for someone to figure out what to do with it ever since. Most sentimental for him, though, was a few years working at the Eglinton, ditched by then-owner Famous Players in 2001, right after being ordered to incoprorate wheelchair accessibility.

Today, it serves as a sporadically-booked banquet hall called the Eglinton Grand. Failing an attempt at a similar strategy, the York Theatre at Eglinton and Yonge is now a fitness club, while the Roxy at Danforth and Greenwood had a façade salvaged for a convenience store.

While most of the other surviving local theatres situated along sidewalks were adopted at one time or another by the Festival Cinemas chain, their decision to give up those ghosts in June 2006 led to an outpouring of sentiment, if considerably out of tune with what became the reality of the second-run cinema business: assembly-line Hollywood for a couple of bucks less in the narrowing window prior to DVD.

Reality was that no one was going to take the time and money to trek across town to see something unique, knowing there were easier methods of watching it at home. So, the double-bills got more predictable, but even that centre could not hold.

"The Rogers video store across the street from here is second-run now," says Pereira between shifts of supervising the renovation. "Running this kind of theatre also means you have to be in tune with the surrounding neighbourhood."

SwitchWorks Technologies, the company Pereria works for, secured a lease from the Kingsway building’s owner in August. The no-longer "final" screenings coincided with a hasty effort to designate the building a heritage site, ensuring that its circa 1939 art deco elements be preserved in any future development.

Turns out that, in the Etobicoke strip originally designed to evoke old-timey England — albeit in the age of the automobile — movies remained the best idea anyone had for the building at 3030 Bloor St. W.

The renovation effort is also designed to steer attention to SwitchWorks’ service, WHIP tv, offering a broadband streaming media television package that focuses on ethnic niche channels, but also the infamously regulation-defying channel Star Ray TV.

Pereria thinks that being alongside the Royal York subway station can only work in the new Kingsway’s favour — perhaps even luring people with little awareness of the area — although local demand will factor in the decisions of what flicks will play for two to four weeks at a time. The idea is to bring the movies that tend to draw audiences at the Cumberland and Varsity about 10 kilometres west, while never overlapping with the nearby Cineplex-owned Queensway.

Curiously enough, the big-chain cinema business in Toronto has never swung back around to the idea of salvaging an old movie house, if just for sentimental reasons. Three other theatres attached to the Festival chain at its end, the Fox, Revue and Royal, have all resumed operations independent of one another, each having applied distinct survival strategies. That leaves the Paradise — which Pereria investigated into taking over, to no avail — still standing vacant, although recently removed graffiti would suggest some stirrings.

Meanwhile, the century-old Bloor Cinema, which has been managed independently for the past decade, provides Pereira with inspiration of how a theatre can survive without leaning on last-chance screenings of movies that cycled out of the gargantuan AMCs, even if they still do some of that. But not unlike its anachronistic counterpart in a sleepy neighbourhood, the Mt. Pleasant, plans for the Kingsway are banking on the theory that playing one movie on one screen for consecutive evenings can still draw a crowd.

"People can complain about a disappearing theatre all they want," says Pereira. "But for the purpose of being able to stay in business, it always comes down to one basic question — did you actually bother going when it was there?"

 

A recent move to designate the Kingsway Theatre as being of cultural heritage value or interest was successful. On February 20th, 2008, the City of Toronto passed a bylaw protecting the historic theatre, and ensuring that any future development at the site must maintain the original 1920's Art Deco design and style. To view the bylaw itself, click here.

 

To view the pertinent documents, click here.