The Highland Cinemas is a place that’s both hard to find and impossible to miss or forget. It’s located in Kinmount, Ontario, a village in the middle of cottage country with a year-round population hovering around 500. It’s a strange location to build a five screen multiplex theatre, but for seasonal vacationers, die hard regulars, and a good deal of local wildlife, the Highland has become an indispensable institution. Despite being set back in a part of the forest that can’t be seen from the main drag, the large Laurel and Hardy sporting marquee of the Highland can easily be seen upon approach from County Road 121.
The Highland Cinemas and its builder/operator/chief employee Keith Stata are the subjects of director Matt Finlin’s documentary The Movie Man (making its broadcast premiere on Hollywood Suite on Wednesday, August 7, 2024 at 9:00 pm, and available to stream on demand shortly after). Finlin’s film (produced in part by Barenaked Ladies’ Ed Robertson, who has fond memories of the theatre and still has a home nearby) profiles several tumultuous years for Stata and the Highland, as the owner tries to juggle numerous financial balls and leap countless logistical hurdles while his high-upkeep business is shuttered due to the global pandemic. The Movie Man does an exceptional job of illustrating what makes the Highland so special and unique, but it’s another thing entirely to visit the theatre. It’s the kind of experience that no amount of words or images could do proper justice, with the documentary serving not only as a profile of the person who built it, but a crackerjack advertisement for the theatre itself.
Pulling into the theatre’s parking lot is a lot like entering a portal into an alternate world just beyond the tree line. You drive up a steep(ish) hill and park amongst the trees. If you’re leaving at night, you might want to check and make sure there aren’t any bear cubs or raccoons hanging around your car. After a little bit of searching to gain your bearings, you’ll find the doors to the theatre, decked out with numerous messages to patrons – some saying the usual spiel about not bringing in outside food or drink and to respect one’s surroundings, and some espousing the importance of not keeping the door open for too long and letting mosquitos and other bugs inside the building. It looks a lot like someone’s house from the outside, and it kinda is when one considers how much of himself Stata has put into the property.
Once inside, it’s easy to become disoriented by the sensory overload. The ticket booth and concession stands are easy to spot from the entrance, but good luck not getting distracted by the decor. In something The Movie Man can only glimpse without getting distracted itself, it becomes immediately apparent that the building isn’t merely a theatre, but also a full on nostalgia museum. There’s so much ephemera from a wide swath of pop culture history that the doors to the actual theatre auditoriums are sometimes hard to spot if you don’t know where you’re going.
Stata isn’t just a film buff, but also a collector extraordinaire. Various projectors from the bygone days of 8, 16, and 35mm film line the corridors and various specialty rooms throughout the Highland’s maze of hallways, offering a glimpse into various different moments in the history of theatrical exhibition. Photocopied sheets of past programming – ranging from the 1970s to the present – can be spotted in various places. There are requisite displays of photographs of old theatres and lobby cards for films of yore, but most of the wall, ceiling, and floor space in the halls of the Highland are devoted to large scale time capsules that house various bric-a-brac from the past several decades. It’s not all film; television, fads, and world events are all well represented. It’s a deep dive not only into history, but the sort of things that make Stata tick and keep persevering with his business in spite of numerous tectonic shifts in the industry; a perfect metaphor for someone who has paved a path on their own unique terms.
Owner Keith Stata in the corridors of the Highland Cinemas, in a still from director Matt Finlin’s The Movie Man.
The Movie Man chronicles Stata’s DIY achievements from the theatre’s infancy. A local resident who started his career in construction and contracting, Stata build the Highland literally from the ground up, starting with a single screen and tacking onto the building from there. The gradual expansion to five screens was helped along by the fact that so many of the other single screen theatres in the area were starting to close up shop. A lot of the day-to-day features of the theatre (curtains, doors, etc.) are taken from other movies houses around the world that went under. It was a labour of love that seemed foolhardy at many points, but ultimately bloomed into a successful enough seasonal operation that stays open from the late spring until around Canadian Thanksgiving. Whenever activities get rained out in cottage country (or people just need to duck in for some AC or get away from their families), the Highland starts to fill up quick.
That doesn’t make Stata’s dream into a hugely profitable endeavour. Staffing is always an issue in such a small community with a largely seasonal population boom. The aging building sits dormant for the harshest months of the year, and Stata is often on his own when it comes to dealing with building maintenance and repairs during that time, something exacerbated by the 2020 pandemic shutdowns because plugging holes in aging infrastructure costs cash and none was coming into the business during those couple of years. Add to that the fact that movie studios still demand a large cut of ticket sales, and there’s no real margin for profits after the cost of materials and labour. (During a recent trip to the Highland, Strata also said that a lack of movies aimed at adult audiences was also causing some damage to the business, but that could also be because the Highland is only open during the teen and family oriented blockbuster season, and not in the fall or winter when Oscar baiting films are generally released.)
Then there’s the matter of being located literally in the middle of the Canadian woods. Outside of the fact that they would only be catering to a sparse number of locals in the winter, the Highland shuts down in part because the self-sufficient Stata couldn’t keep up with all the snow removal on his own. The woods are home to various four legged critters that seemingly demand their own cut of the concession stand on a regular basis, or else the’ll find a way inside the cinema, something both Finlin’s documentary and security camera stills next to the snack bar can attest to.
Further cutting into Stata’s wallet is his devotion to the local stray cat population, which is comprised of dozens of felines that have been callously abandoned by their owners over the course of their vacations. (He’d take in more if he could, but the space is already beyond capacity, and the local government doesn’t seem to see these strays as a major issue.) The grounds around the Highland – a maze of shipping containers and fenced off enclosures – are a cat sanctuary that houses around forty well loved and cared for animals. Stata cares about the animals living in and around the Highland as much as he does the patron’s experience and the movies themselves.
The Highland is a great place to see a movie, and it performs a major community service by being one of the few cultural institutions that is easily accessible to many of the surrounding communities. The auditoriums are intimate, cozy, and well loved in the best possible way, and while a lot of memories will be made by what patrons see on screen, it’s Stata’s undying enthusiasm and will to keep going and the overall trip into his psyche that will leave the biggest impression. People will buy a ticket for a 140 minute movie, but they could very well spend more time wandering the halls and the grounds around the theatre, making a simple couple of hours out turn into an all day affair. When I visited the theatre not too long ago with a group of fellow journalists, the few hours spent there felt all too short for such an immersive place. The Movie Man will give the uninitiated a taste of what Stata and the Highland have to offer, and many will catch the itch of wanting to go there as soon as possible.
The Movie Man premieres on Hollywood Suite in Canada on Wednesday, August 7, 2024. The Highland Cinemas is located at 4131 County Road 121 in Kinmount, Ontario.
