I will miss you so

It's curtains for Lefont Garden Hills Cinema

By STEVE MURRAY, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/23/2006

After more than two decades of bringing foreign and art-house films to Buckhead, exhibitor George Lefont is closing Lefont Garden Hills Cinema this weekend.

The British comedy "Keeping Mum" will continue to play through Sunday at the theater, which opened on Peachtree Road in 1946. "Then," Lefont says, "we're closed."

The future of the space is currently unclear, though there is a chance it could become a venue for live theater performances.

In August, Lefont sold his business at the historic, 1939 Plaza Theatre in Poncey-Highlands to Jonathan and Gayle Rej, who now program screenings there.

Lefont was synonymous with intown art cinema in the 1980s and '90s, running theaters that included the now-razed Silver Screen at Peachtree Battle and the Screening Room at Lindbergh Plaza. But with the shuttering of Garden Hills, he will now operate only one theater outside the Perimeter: the eight-screen Lefont Sandy Springs on Roswell Road.

Lefont made the decision to end programming at the 375-seat Garden Hills venue as his lease expired, citing the difficulty of competing with multiplex cinemas and frustrations with getting the films he wanted from studios.

"Single-screen theaters are difficult to maintain now, and not just financially," he says. "Release dates [for films] are controlled by the studios, so either you have too many movies or not enough."

In other words, if a desirable new movie is released by its studio on a specific date, and another film is booked to play at the single-screen theater, the studios will offer their new movie to another venue with free screens.

"It's a definite challenge to get the movies you want at the right time you want them," Lefont says.

It's not just an Atlanta problem, he says: "Single-screen theaters are going out of business in droves."

In recent years Lefont has had intown competition from the eight-screen Landmark Midtown Art Cinema.

"Everything is affected by other competition," Lefont says. "They've certainly played a good deal of product that otherwise might have played at Garden Hills."

Lefont owns the seating in the Garden Hills and says he's in negotiations with the landlord about it.

"The seating is going to remain there," says Victor Romano of Victor Realty, which manages the strip of shops on Peachtree Road that contains Garden Hills. "We can't very well lease it as a theater without any seats."

But Romano hopes that the space will become home to a live theater company, rather than another film exhibitor, and says he is in talks with potential tenants.

There is a stage beneath the theater's film screen, though only 12 feet deep and 36 feet wide. A theater company would almost certainly have to remove some of the front rows of seats and expand the stage deeper into the auditorium.

"We also would be flexible for something other than a theater, but we will not want a restaurant," Romano added. "But you've got a theater building and floors that slant down, and a stage. To renovate that for another purpose other than a theater would probably be pretty expensive."

In addition to the Landmark Midtown, other intown theaters that will continue to show art, foreign and independent fare are the four-screen Regal Tara and the two-screen Plaza.

In his final days at Garden Hills, Lefont said he felt gratitude to its moviegoers.

"I want to thank the Atlanta community for the tremendous patronage we've had," he said. "I've had the theater for 21 years, so thanks very much."

© 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution