Entering a New World of Moviegoing

Lumiere is not a movie house for munching popcorn through the latest Hollywood blockbuster. For those who prefer sipping rum and nibbling on quiche as they read the subtitles of Cannes-honored films from Japan and Sweden, it represents the sophisticated alternative to shopping-mall theaters.

Lumiere is one of four luxury movie theaters recently opened in the most cosmopolitan sections here. They are as far from the bustle and long lines of mainline movie houses as the capital’s Zona Rosa restaurants and boutiques are from the drug wars and paramilitary massacres tearing apart the rest of this country.

Throughout Colombia’s violent history, the elite has looked for oases from the surrounding troubles. Movie houses like Lumiere have become the latest places for escape.

For U.S. prices--both for tickets and on the menu, about twice what other theaters charge--the well-heeled and intellectually inclined can relax in lounge chairs, their Mexican beers resting on cafe tables, as they watch the misadventures of the family of a Taipei chef or examine an Italian writer’s relationship with her grandmother.

“People come to get away from stress,” says Camilo Leon, manager of Lumiere, named for the two French brothers credited with showing the first motion picture. “Audiences hardly come to war movies.”

Indeed, few seats were filled for a recent showing of “Prisoner of the Mountains,” the 1997 Academy Award nominee from Russia about the war in Chechnya. In contrast, “For Rosanna,” an Italian film about life and death in a village, was a hit.

Leon says experience has also shown that big commercial movies usually are not popular in these smaller theaters. A shopping center a few blocks away tried the cinema-bar concept with blockbusters and had to go back to a traditional movie-house style, he says.

Cinema-bars were first tried in Colombia about three years ago as a way to bring audiences increasingly accustomed to renting videos back to movie theaters. The idea occurred to Ivan McAllister, then a vice president at Cine Colombia, the country’s biggest theater chain.

He tried the concept first at Hacienda Santa Barbara, an upscale shopping center built around an old ranch house in the northern part of the city. That cinema-bar still operates, and a visit there shows how much the theaters have evolved.

At Hacienda Santa Barbara, sleek bars with tubular furniture are built on two levels. The screening rooms are in the back, nearly hidden. The bars are clearly for before and after, not during, the movie.

That single effort has developed into a small circuit. The rest of the theaters are independently owned. McAllister owns Lumiere, sort of a test kitchen for his cinematic ideas.

Here, the screen is separated from the rest of the bar by a heavy curtain. But the furniture is the same as in the bar, and waiters continue to serve drinks and snacks during the movie.

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The viewing section has 75 seats and three showings daily. The cinema-bar can break even with 80 customers a day, Leon says. Another cinema-bar, Gotica, is nearby.

The latest addition to the circuit, barely a year old, is Cinema Paraiso in the bohemian Usaquen district, once a village north of Bogota that has now been surrounded by urban sprawl. A cinema-bar would be the perfect complement to Usaquen’s art galleries and antique shops, decided partners Luz Marina Raad and Matilde DeBoshell.

DeBoshell has worked in movies and Raad has run bars. So they teamed up, bought an old house in Usaquen and gutted the interior with the aid of an architect-investor. The result is the most radical yet of Bogota’s cinema-bars.

At Paraiso, which means “paradise,” the 80-seat movie theater is the bar. Customers come early, pick their tables, arrange their chairs to suit themselves and wait for the film to start as they sample the prosciutto with brie.

“When I have visitors who have seen everything, I bring them here,” says painter Samuel Ruiz, a regular at Paraiso. “I have a cousin who has traveled the world as a pilot for American Airlines for 14 years, and he has never seen anything like this. People never expect Bogota to be this sophisticated.”

And the concept is still evolving.

Lumiere has realized that its matinee clientele is mainly women over 50 who do not drink cocktails or beer in the afternoon. In response, the theater has added a cappuccino machine and desserts.

Next, McAllister plans to open a cinema-bar in Candelaria, the colonial downtown district that now houses mainly students and artists. The challenge is to make the cinema-bar concept work for customers who have intellectual curiosity but less money.