Halifax has a rich history of independent movie houses: Everyone from your grew-up-here co-worker to former national poet laureate George Elliott Clarke can wax poetic about the locally-run spot they favoured for screenings, be it The Oxford or the fantastically named Wormwood’s Dog and Monkey Cinema. (Clarke talks a lot about the transformative times he spent seeing movies on Gottingen Street in his luminous 2021 memoir.) These small, non-corporate movie houses were a space to be transported through the power of film—something that feels even more precious in this post-lockdown, Marvel Cinematic Universe moment.
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Lucky for film buffs across the city, then, that Carbon Arc—Halifax’s last indie theatre—has announced its return to regular, in-person screenings, starting this weekend, Oct. 14-15. With a sporadic in-person presence throughout COVID’s early days, fans of the space have been waiting for word of what’s next. Now we know: More movies are coming down the pipe, but first it’s two showings of Finnish feature Girl Picture, the Sundance audience award-winning story of two best friends in the thralls of first love and the intense figure skater they meet along the way.
Later this month, Carbon Arc will celebrate Halloween with a showing of the classic vampire flick Nosferatu—a silent film from 1922—with live music to accompany it.
This article appears in Oct 1 – Nov 6, 2022.
