Cento Cedar Cinema
38 Cedar Alley,
San Francisco,
CA
94109
38 Cedar Alley,
San Francisco,
CA
94109
3 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 31 of 31 comments
A very San Francisco kind of place. I remember My Dinner with Andre, and the Secret Policeman’s Ball playing in the theater’s last days
The Cento Cedar was a very cozy movie house, in the Cento Cedar alley. Very well kept and clean. The projection system was rear projection, like the Richileu. My very first movie I saw there was called “Salo” by producer Pasolini, who was murdered 6 months after the film was made. It was advertised in the paper as “the most horrifying movie ever made” I thought it was a horror movie, it wasn’t by a long shot. Derived by a book written by De Sade, it depicted amputations, scalpings etc, and half the audience walked out of it in disgust. The Cento had a little snack bar that served great coffee. Small cozy house with no interior of any significance Films there were offbeat, foreign, and attracted a very cultured crowd. Miss the theatre very much
I got to work as the projectionist for the Cento Cedar. What was so different about this theater wsa the fact that it had rear projection. That meant you could not shoot the picture directly on the screen,or you would blind everyone in the theater,so you shot into a mirror that reflected the picture onto the screen. Since you were behind the screen,you could have very little light. You were working almost in the dark. Not many projectionist got to do rear projection,I am glad I did.
See Tillmany’s comment above for details.
Status: Closed;
Screen: One;
Seating: 250;
Note: Correct name is CENTO Cedar, not CENTRO.
Located in a narrow alleyway north of Geary, the Cento Cedar opened in August 1965 as the Cedar Alley Cinema, offering offbeat and revival programming, and espresso coffee in the lobby. In October 1967, it was renamed Cento Cedar and continued as a popular venue until July 1984, when its owner and operator, John Buckley, shut down in order to expand to a more desirable location, the former Rio on Union Street which he renamed the Mercury.