Arcade Theater

Arcade Theater

Located in the Arcade building, right next to the entrance to the Éthier Pharmacy, the Arcade Theatre was the only cinema in the territory of the former town of Baie-Comeau (territory before 1983). The cinema has only one screening room.

From the very beginning, it had a bilingual program. The prevalence of English-language cinema, however, was evident in the 1940s and 1950s, but French and later Quebecois cinema was also emerging. The most common genres were American Westerns, musicals, and gangster and spy films. Itinerant screenings were also held in logging camps once a month.

On Saturday afternoons, young people had access to a more age-appropriate movie screening. Indeed, cinema in those decades was primarily for adults. In addition to the Saturday movie, schools occasionally screened films. In 1956, following its acquisition by Gilbert Lacroix, also the owner of Ciné-Hauterive, the Théâtre Arcade took the name Cinéma Festival until the establishment’s closure in 1978.