The Loft Cinema is a nonprofitart house cinema located in Tucson, Arizona. The Loft Cinema screens first-run independent American and foreign films and documentaries, as well as classic art films and special events. The theatre has 3 screens with a seating capacity that ranges from 90 to 370. The largest auditorium is equipped with reel-to-reel 35 mm and 70 mm projectors, in addition to a digital projector and was renovated in 2017 to be fully accessible.
History
The theatre, originally named The Loft, opened as an art house in 1965 at the northeast corner of East Sixth Street and North Fremont Avenue. Designed by architect Howard Peck, and built in 1938, the space first functioned as a meeting place for LDS student members and then was converted into a performance space for Playbox Community Theatre in the late 1950s. In 1965, The Loft took over the space, showing art films for 4 years before switching to adult films in 1969. New management in 1972 renamed the space The New Loft Cinema, and low-budget independent and foreign films were screened. The New Loft moved to its current location at 3233 East Speedway Boulevard in 1992, when the University of Arizona purchased the building. In 2002, then owner, Joe Esposito, sold The New Loft Cinema to the newly formed non-profit, The Tucson Cinema Foundation.
Events
The Loft Cinema hosts a monthly short film contest, First Friday Shorts, co-hosted by comedian and KXCI DJ Brigitte Thum and comedian Mike Sterner, a former writer for Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect. The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been continuously run with a shadow cast at The Loft Cinema since 1978. Ongoing events include monthly director retrospectives, weekend screenings of cult classics, and a monthly free screening of a classic art film as a part of the Essential Cinema program. The Loft Cinema has hosted The Loft Kids Fest, a free 9-day festival for children, every summer since 2006 and The Loft Film Fest, a 5-day film festival in the fall showcasing independent, foreign, and classic films, since 2010.
Recognition
The Loft Cinema was the first American festival member and second American theatre member of the International Confederation of Art Cinemas. The Loft Cinema was a participant in Sundance Film Festival USA from 2012 until the program’s end in 2014, bringing world premieres and guests such as Oscar winnerBrie Larson. In 2015, The Loft Cinema was recognized as a Sundance InstituteArt House Project theater, a collaboration between Art House Convergence and Sundance Institute promoting “theaters in North America that embody a benchmark of excellence in programming, community involvement and operations”. In 2016 through The Loft's solar initiative, it has become the first American member of the Solar World Cinema with its solar powered mobile movie theatre.
