Frida Cinema

The Fiesta Twin Theatre opened in 1988 as part of the Fiesta Marketplace. It had a total seating capacity of 750-seats. It has always shown mainstream American movies with Spanish sub-titles. The theater manages to get in showings of four different movies a night by showing a movie one time in the two auditoriums.

Downtown Santa Ana has a history of showing Spanish-language films. Down the block and on the other side of the street is the long-closed Princess Theatre, which showed Mexican films in the 1950’s. That would be real Mexican films, made in Mexico and with Mexican stars. The nearby historic Yost Theatre also at one time had a Mexican film policy. You could say that the Fiesta Twin Theatre has a rich history behind it also. Metropolitan Theatres, the old Los Angeles chain, which has been around since 1923, was the developer. In the 1950’s Metropolitan ran at one time 12 theaters in Los Angeles. Yes, they are still around with 18 locations in four Western states and British Columbia.

In July of 2011 it was announced that the name Fiesta Market Place would no longer be used to identify the shopping area. Beginning with the reopening of the Yost Theatre as a nightclub in August the area will be called East End to reflect a changing trend. The Orange County Business Journal says that in recent years Hispanic shoppers have moved upscale and have been wooed away from Santa Ana’s downtown by Wal-Mart, Target and even the Irvine Spectrum. The Fiesta Twin Theatre’s website say: $5.00, All Seats, All Shows, Every Day. It was closed January 5, 2014.

It reopened as the Frida Cinema February 21, 2014 with a reduced total seating capacity of 400-seats.

Recent comments (view all 2 comments)

Scott Neff on February 13, 2012 at 11:47 am

There are many many many photos at Cinematour.

http://www.cinematour.com/tour/us/2978.html

Nothing But Cinema on June 28, 2024 at 12:40 am

There are 200 seats in both the left and right auditoriums, totaling 400 seats.

Both auditoriums use a Barco SP4K-12C 4K laser projector (Can display 98.5% of Rec2020, with up to 3000:1 native contrast ratio) and have Dolby 7.1 sound capability.

Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20230927091146/https://thefridacinema.org/private-rentals/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240628015239/https://thefridacinema.org/about/