Opera Plaza Cinema
601 Van Ness Avenue,
San Francisco,
CA
601 Van Ness Avenue,
San Francisco,
CA
4 people
favorited this theater
An unsung art-house fourplex, developed by Allen Michaan as part of a shopping and office plaza near the Civic Center in the mid-1980’s.
Contributed by
Garrett Murphy
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Recent comments (view all 8 comments)
Opera Plaza is NOT the best place but they are the last chance to see some of the bigee underdogs before disappearing completely from SF. I was fortunate to have seen a FEW flicks here both Margaret Cho’s concert films Im The One That i Want & Notorious C.H.O.
Just for the record: the Opera Plaza Cinemas opened on November 16, 1984, so this year, 2004, marks their twentieth anniversary,
no small achievement considering the multiplexes up the street,
and the competitive state of the market
What’s also amazing that this theatre is still going after 20 years is that the screens in the 4 theatres are not much bigger than todays TV sets and they don’t have any upgraded sound.
I caught at least three films here in my visits to the city: Ted Kotcheff’s Joshua Then and Now in July, 1986; a revival of the 1937 Polish/Yiddish film by Michal Waszynski The Dybbuk on November 11, 1989, and the Hungarian Whooping Cough, directed by Péter Gárdos, on August 2, 1990. I remember the theatre as being functional, the screening rooms small, the programming incomparable. Every decent-sized city in America should have an Opera Plaza Cinema. So if the description calls it “an unsung art-house,” I am singing it.
Website for the Opera Plaza Cinema.
I’ve posted information and photos from a recent visit here.
The Landmark Opera Plaza has a marquee out front on Van Ness but they don’t change the wording ever. Says the same thing every day. You don’t know what’s playing. Probably don’t want to pay the help with a ladder to post the new films playing in the tiny cinemas. Just like Century, Brendan and Regal many theatres don’t bother changing the marquee these days. Maybe If they did some advertising out front people will stop in.
After dinner in the region of the Opera Plaza and wanted to have a quiet night and go to the movies with a friend, we decided upon the Opera Plaza cinema.
Tiny cinema is being polite about this place. However, the staff here is great, that or they were just happy to have people there. It shows some really cool movies, easy to get to off Van Ness- so next time I’ll be out in the Bay Area and there’s a movie I want to catch, I can see myself hopping on the 49.
I do however need to caution anyone going to be sure to not use those BOA ATM’s out front near the fountain. The darned thing ate my card and from what I gather its one of the oldest ATM’s in the city of San Francisco.