Some one on Twitter posted some pages from Festival Magazine from the 80s, and looking at them, I was filled with so many memories. Among them I recall how I would go to the nearby Bloor Cinema and grab a copy from the newspaper box. I’d head over to Dooneys or some other coffee shop or maybe just head home to Brunswick Avenue and plan out my movie viewing for the next few weeks.

While I sometimes went to the other rep cinemas like the Revue or the Kingsway, I mainly went to the Bloor. This page below captures what the programming was like for it at the time.

There was often a special festival or a run of films like the new Chinese films shown above. Then there were films that had just finished running through the new theatres like Cineplex’s and were now getting a second chance to be seen. And then there were fan favorites, like Stop Making Sense. (If Stop Making Sense or a Blade Runner was in, I was there.) Most of all what I loved about the Bloor was this eclectic mix of programming.

The Revue’s programming was more straightforward. It pretty much showed films that had just finished their run in main theatres. Did I still like going there? For sure. (Except the time in winter when the theatre was showing a film without any heat!)

I loved looking at those pages. I loved seeing all the great films that came out in the 80s listed again. I really loved seeing the ad for The Other Cafe! (I went there often too.) It’s all so good.

Seeing movies was different back then. You might eventually see them on TV, but if you missed a good film when it was first out, you still had a chance of seeing it in the rep theatres. Not to mention classics and fan favorites. It was a good time at the cinema, for sure.