More cocktail-and-a-movie premieres with neighboring restaurants. More film festivals. And a striking new partnership with a contemporary art center four blocks east.
These are some of the ambitious changes planned for Cinema Paradiso Hollywood, the 12-year-old downtown arthouse theater, which on Monday announced its new owner: the Hollywood Art and Culture Center.
The center will take over operations on June 1, executive director Jennifer Homan told the South Florida Sun Sentinel, although the new two-year lease agreement is still “being finalized.”
“It’s exciting because the timing was absolutely right,” Homan said. “We already run the contemporary art galleries and the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center, and now we have a movie theater. This lets us activate all three spaces and cross-pollinate our programming while still hosting many movie premieres.”
Programming from the current owner, the Broward County Film Society — which operates Savor Cinema in Fort Lauderdale and the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF) — will continue through June 5, said Hal Axler, the society’s managing director.
Then, on June 6, the first event under Homan’s leadership will be the wide-release premiere of Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme,” according to a news release from the Hollywood Art and Culture Center.
The Broward County Film Society board decided to transfer ownership of the theater to the art center earlier this year after Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed $32 million in state arts and culture funding last summer, a wipeout that “took us by surprise,” Axler said.
“We assumed we wouldn’t get funding this year, so we decided as a board to focus more on Savor Cinema and less on Cinema Paradiso Hollywood,” Axler said. “But this is totally a positive for us. It’s not a negative bailout thing. We’re thrilled [the art center is] managing it. We feel that an arts center in Hollywood is way more suited to marketing in Hollywood, to the crowds that live downtown.”
Lisa Grigorian, the film society’s president and CEO, stressed that FLIFF’s partnership with Cinema Paradiso Hollywood as a host venue for premieres will “stay intact.” The festival will mark its 40th anniversary with screenings tentatively set for Feb. 20 to March 1, 2026, at multiple Broward County venues.
In the meantime, the Art and Culture Center will continue honoring benefits for Broward County Film Society members, including free and discounted movie passes at Cinema Paradiso, she added.
Lisa Liotta, operations manager for the Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency, said she’s seen foot traffic declining at the theater for years. When the film society told her it no longer wanted to program the intimate 72-seater, she said she helped connect the nonprofit with Homan — and Homan liked the idea.
“It’s a wonderful amenity for a historic downtown to have an arthouse cinema,” Liotta said. “But the location wasn’t always given a whole lot of love. Now everyone wins, and we’re excited for [the center] to broaden the scope of art and culture it brings to Hollywood.”
Cinema Paradiso Hollywood was the brainchild of FLIFF director Gregory von Hausch, who left the nonprofit last year. In 2013, he opened the Hollywood theater at 2008 Hollywood Boulevard, a sister to Savor Cinema in downtown Fort Lauderdale, to grow the festival’s footprint farther south. In 2021, von Hausch also took over Fort Lauderdale’s Classic Gateway Theatre, then bowed out a year later because of mounting renovation expenses.
The switch in Cinema Paradiso Hollywood operators now leaves the Broward County Film Society in charge of a single movie theater: the county-funded Savor Cinema.
Homan, who took over the Hollywood Art and Culture Center in January 2024, said her new role as theater operator came at an ideal time. Her takeover dovetails with the gallery’s upcoming 50th anniversary and the debut of a new 5,000-square-foot extension wing in October. That education center, she said, will offer a green screen and a film-editing lab for local filmmakers to produce homegrown projects that will later premiere at Cinema Paradiso. In addition, exhibits at the art center will be paired with more performances and films, she said.
Meanwhile, the theater will keep screening first-run premieres, with receptions taking place at nearby restaurants, she added. Another popular film festival, Popcorn Frights, will also host screenings there later this summer.
“The way to stay successful is to cross-promote the theater with the art center with the tens of thousands of visitors we already reach,” Homan said. “That’s how we’ll make sure the theater stays the jewel that it is downtown.”
A premiere party for “The Phoenician Scheme” will take place at 6 p.m. June 6 at The Vintage on Harrison, 1955 Harrison St. That will be followed by a 7 p.m. screening at Cinema Paradiso Hollywood, 2008 Hollywood Blvd. Visit fliff.com.
Originally Published: May 20, 2025 at 1:27 PM EDT