In suburban Gardena, 800 chairs shoulder 79 years of intrigue, mystique, frights and laughter from their countless occupants.<\/p>\n
For the upcoming decades, Judy Kim<\/b> \u2013 operator and heir to Gardena Cinema<\/b> \u2013 has a plan to raise enough funds to both take care of certain structural improvements and transfer the single-screen theater\u2019s ownership into a nonprofit. Through that, she hopes that nonprofit\u2019s stewardship can make the theater \u2013 and her family\u2019s legacy \u2013 an everlasting piece of the South Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe nonprofit never dies, right?\u201d Kim said. \u201cUnless the board of directors dissolves it, it will stay alive forever, so I thought, \u2018Oh, maybe I could do that, and then I could die peacefully, knowing that it\u2019ll be shepherded by some board of directors after I die.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The historic theater has survived many iterations and remains a destination for repertory screenings, events and the cinephiles who attend them. Kim\u2019s father, John Kim<\/b>, had listed the landmark for sale shortly after her mother, Nancy Kim \u2013 the true heart of the cinema \u2013 died in 2022. Kim hopes her nonprofit, Friends of Gardena Cinema<\/b>, will be the one to close the deal.<\/p>\n After operating as Park Theatre when it opened in 1946, Gardena Cinema came into ownership of Kim\u2019s family in 1976.<\/p>\n South Korean immigrants, John and Nancy had dreams of becoming business owners when they moved to the United States. For Nancy, this movie theater was love at first sight.<\/p>\n Sensing a business opportunity for the South Bay community, the Kims took what was then a first-run theater for mainstream American cinema and switched it to being a Spanish-language theater. They dubbed this new look Teatro Variedades<\/i>, although the \u201cGC\u201d abbreviation crowning the marquee outside never changed.<\/p>\n By the time the 1990s rolled around, the operation pivoted back to the Gardena Cinema name and back to first-run movies \u2013 memorably, Judy Kim recalled, with the blockbuster \u201cIndependence Day\u201d in which Los Angeles was destroyed by an alien invasion.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt started Will Smith<\/b>\u2019s career in film,\u201d she said. \u201cFourth of July was \u2018Will Smith Weekend\u2019 every year from that point on. We played all the Will Smith movies.\u201d<\/p>\n In giving a tour of the theater, Kim highlighted the remaining \u201ccry rooms\u201d \u2013 elevated, sound-proof seating areas for mothers to bring their crying infants during shows \u2013 as one of the many relics from its era. For a while, the rooms were repurposed as private seating areas for children\u2019s birthdays, but nowadays, they serve as a private perch for high-profile attendees \u2013 such as \u201cAnora\u201d director Sean Baker<\/b>, a repeat patron of the theater.<\/span><\/p>\n The projectionist booth is similarly a window in time, with the so-called \u201cguillotine windows\u201d still in place. (Nitrate film stock, in wide use before the 1950s, was extremely flammable; guillotine windows were designed to drop shut and suffocate a blaze.) Old outlines on the floor indicated where older projectors used to be; a modern digital projector currently occupies the space and Kim said she hopes to upgrade to a laser projector in the future.<\/p>\n As Kim came of age, her parents began to encounter financial troubles with managing the theater, in large part after being defrauded on multiple occasions. This prompted her to shift course, become a lawyer and help her family untangle themselves from the rut. This proved to be the kind of investment that continues to pay off today.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t even realize it at the time, but seriously, the fact that I have a legal background helps me think outside of the box,\u201d Kim said.<\/p>\n Some of those thoughts outside of the box include a recurring short film screening event \u2013 which bestows a wrestling championship belt to the creator of the voted-upon best short. Another out of the box oddity about the theater is that the wall behind the concession stand is actually a prop: it was installed in front of the mirrored wall for the on-site filming of the 2019 biopic \u201cDolemite is My Name.\u201d Kim simply kept it after they wrapped the shoot.<\/p>\n Gardena Cinema\u2019s most recent pivot to repertory cinema \u2013 screenings of older movies, typically as special events \u2013 is in keeping with a handful of other niche, single-screen operations throughout Los Angeles.<\/p>\n The New Beverly Cinema<\/b> in Fairfax showcases a variety of older movies, often from owner Quentin Tarantino<\/b>\u2019s personal collection of 35mm reels. Tarantino\u2019s other theater, Vista Theatre<\/b>, showcases both first-run movies and older movies \u2013 sometimes as events featuring directors or actors from the films.<\/span><\/p>\n Garden Cinema found success as an alternative venue during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when it took advantage of its parking lot to create an impromptu drive-in against its northside wall. The 2023 strikes by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists<\/b> as well as the Writers Guild of America<\/b> ultimately forced Gardena Cinema to start screening older movies \u2013 otherwise, nothing would be screened.<\/p>\n Pivoting to older, event-driven movies to ride that wave has continued to be a success for the business. One recent example: Westlake Village-based horror entertainment vertical Gorgazma<\/b> in October hosted a screening of \u201cArmy of Darkness,\u201d preceded by one of the company\u2019s own short films plus offering exclusive merchandise and a Q&A session with Gorgazma founder Mark Villalobos \u2013<\/b> who worked on stop-motion animation for \u201cArmy of Darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n This change in how fans consume film, Kim speculated, it motivated in part by people wanting to experience movies in more interesting ways than what their home TV or smartphones offer. For older movies especially, there is also nostalgic appeal for older moviegoers and a chance for younger ones to see it on the big screen.<\/p>\n \u201cI just showed \u2018Lost Boys\u2019 last year, and I remember somebody saying \u2018I\u2019ve already seen this movie on my phone, but I want to see it on a big screen,\u2019\u201d she recalled. \u201cAnd then when they came out, they were like, \u2018Oh my god, I could see glitter in the blood!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n At the time of the interview, Kim was preparing for November\u2019s monthly screening for members of the Friends nonprofit, who make an annual donation toward the fundraising effort to acquire the property.<\/p>\n It was one member\u2019s birthday, so he had the chance to pick out the surprise screening that month. He\u2019d arrived early, along with some others who style themselves as \u201cvolunteers\u201d \u2013 patrons who take the place of employees behind the counter or behind the scenes.<\/span><\/p>\n Bill DeFrance<\/b> is one of those volunteers.<\/p>\n \u201cI first discovered it in 2013,\u201d he recalled. \u201cWhen I was going to film school, I\u2019d take to 210 bus down Crenshaw and I\u2019d pass it and think \u2018Oh, there\u2019s a single-screen theater in the South Bay,\u2019 which was a dream for me, growing up in the South Bay.<\/p>\n DeFrance first got to know Kim when she interviewed her for a YouTube series on single-screen theaters. He noted that she would show more esoteric films alongside the mainstream ones and his interest grew from there.<\/p>\n It all reminded him of when he, as a boy, would be driven by the former Pussycat Theater in Torrance, where filmmaker Tarantino once worked as an usher. That\u2019s why he\u2019s happy to offer free labor to Gardena Cinema\u2019s programming.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m living the dream,\u201d DeFrance added. \u201cI can\u2019t just ignore fate leading me in this direction. And there\u2019s opportunities that come from that.\u201d<\/p>\n These opportunities speak to an important part of movie theaters for Kim: like Tarantino, other prominent filmmakers count theaters as their first jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople like Sean Baker and even David Fincher<\/b>, they\u2019re not just filmmakers. They used to work in the movie theaters. That\u2019s why they know so much about film,\u201d she explained. \u201cSean Baker said he used to work in a movie theater just like this in his hometown in New Jersey. David Fincher said that he worked in a movie theater just like this in Oregon. Everybody that\u2019s very well respected in the film industry,\u00a0 <\/span>they\u2019re well respected because they\u2019re very knowledgeable. Why do they have so much knowledge? Because they actually were working in the trenches.\u201d<\/p>\n It was actually a brainwave from Baker, the \u201cAnora\u201d director who is also known for \u201cThe Florida Project,\u201d that put Kim on the path to the nonprofit. She recalled coming up short on the theater\u2019s property tax bill several years ago; once Baker got wind of that, he offered to contribute to that bill, but she hesitated to accept a donation without being able to provide a tax deduction.<\/p>\n That lit up a lightbulb in everyone\u2019s heads \u2013 and now Friends of Gardena Cinema has a goal to raise $15 million. There\u2019s $10.5 million to acquire and transfer ownership of the landmark, plus $2.5 million to pay for capital improvements and another $2 million to create an endowment to cement its future \u2013 by being able to pay operators to keep it going.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not really an employee either. I\u2019m kind of a volunteer myself,\u201d Kim admitted, noting that she occasionally taps into her legal background to handle personal injury cases to generate her own income. \u201cAll the money that we make here goes into the cinema to keep it open.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source labusinessjournal.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In suburban Gardena, 800 chairs shoulder 79 years of intrigue, mystique, frights and laughter from their countless occupants. For the upcoming decades, Judy Kim \u2013 operator and heir to Gardena Cinema \u2013 has a plan to raise enough funds to both take care of certain structural improvements and transfer the single-screen theater\u2019s ownership into a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2182535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[420625],"class_list":["post-2182534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-gardena-cinema"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Entertainment-Cinematic-Revival-Los-Angeles-Business-Journal.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2182534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2182536,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182534\/revisions\/2182536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2182535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2182534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2182534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2182534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.labusinessjournal.com\/cdn-cgi\/imagedelivery\/_2XQnFrfZ7ey2aE-6RbOUQ\/labusinessjournal.com\/2025\/11\/PG00_GARDENA_CINEMA10_PC_DS.jpg\/w=9999\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.labusinessjournal.com\/cdn-cgi\/imagedelivery\/_2XQnFrfZ7ey2aE-6RbOUQ\/labusinessjournal.com\/2025\/11\/PG00_GARDENA_CINEMA06_PC_DS.jpg\/w=9999\"\/)
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.labusinessjournal.com\/cdn-cgi\/imagedelivery\/_2XQnFrfZ7ey2aE-6RbOUQ\/labusinessjournal.com\/2025\/11\/PG00_GARDENA_CINEMA06_PC_DS.jpg\/w=9999\")