Cinema Detroit moving to new home this fall

Cinema Detroit, which screens alternative movies in two auditoriums at the former Burton International School on Cass Avenue, will move its operations to the Furniture Factory performance space at 4126 3rd St., just south of Willis, beginning next month.

Theater organizers Paula and Tim Guthat plan to have two auditoriums outfitted with new digital projectors up and running by Oct. 1 in their new location, which is closer to the heart of Detroit's thriving Midtown area. Until then, they will continue to screen films in the Burton space, which is about half a mile away.

“The theater will all be on one level, so it will be (Americans with Disabilities Act)-compliant, including a handicapped-accessible bathroom,” Paula Guthat says about the new 1,800-square-foot space. “We also want to have a cafe where people can meet before or after to discuss the movie or just hang out.”

With the closing of the Ren Cen 4 in June, Cinema Detroit is the only movie theater in or near downtown Detroit that shows first-run movies nightly.

The Guthats, who live in Harper Woods, began showing movies in the circa-1917 Burton building two years ago and quickly gained notice for offering premieres of alternative and offbeat films and occasional classics.

“We’ve been especially eclectic lately, between the mainstream art house stuff, the true indies, documentaries and films directed by women,” Paula Guthat says.

Though a majority of patrons come from Detroit, Guthat says about 40% of Cinema Detroit's audience is from the suburbs and beyond, especially when the theater screens films that can’t be seen anywhere else. Audiences have also been drawn to the theater because it offers them a chance to watch a film in the old-school confines of the antique Burton auditorium.

This weekend, Cinema Detroit is screening “Mistress America,” a screwball comedy from director Noah Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale”) and “Chloe & Theo,” about an Inuit man and homeless woman who meet on the streets of New York.

The Guthats are renting the Furniture Factory, which once provided a black-box performance space for local theater companies. It has been largely unused since 2011.

The Burton location, on Cass near Martin Luther King Boulevard, has been screening movies since 2009, first as the Burton Theatre and then as Cass City Cinema. The theater hosted a live appearance by actor Crispin Glover in 2010 and offered an eight-month run of Detroit-made documentary “Searching for Sugar Man."

Burton building owner Joel Landy says he hasn’t ruled out the idea of showing movies at his soon-to-be-vacant auditoriums. “I need someone like the Guthats with the same dedication and passion for good movies,” he says.

Contact John Monaghan: madjohn@earthlink.net