VILLAGE OF MANLIUS – Though he has been proprietor of the Manlius Art Cinema for three decades, Nat Tobin believes that in a greater sense the narrow East Seneca Street theater has belonged to the local filmgoing community.
“I love the audience most of all,” Tobin said. “The people that come here are the ones that make this theater special.”
For the last 17 of those 30 years, Tobin has co-owned the art cinema with his wife, Eileen Lowell, building up an abundance of memories and friends while screening too many films to count.
This week, the couple transfers full ownership to Dan Chapman and Joe Ori, who are set to continue their operation of beer and wood-fired pizza establishment A.W. Wander as well.
Since that eatery is on the corner of the strip that contains the cinema, the new owners can play up the “symbiotic relationship” between a movie and a meal, Tobin said.
Now that he and his wife are in their seventies, Tobin said he wants the theater to be passed down to a younger generation that can offer different ideas, better navigate social media and more easily climb ladders and change light bulbs.
Built in 1918, the theater is 17 feet wide and was extended to 100 feet in length from projector to screen after a fire in 1940. Due to its dimensions, it has been called everything from “a horizontal elevator shaft” to “a bowling alley with a ramp.” Despite the limited space, Tobin and Lowell are grateful for the time they’ve spent running the theater.
“I quickly fell in love with this place after I took it over,” Tobin said. “This theater’s become like an appendage to me, so I imagine initially I’ll feel rather lost without it, but it has been an extreme honor in my life to do this.”
Following a career in movie advertising, Tobin took up the reins completely on April 1, 1992 upon entering into a profit-sharing agreement with the Manlius Art Cinema’s previous owner Sam Mitchell, who had grown more interested in multiplexes than single-screen theaters.
Tobin also picked up the Westcott Theater from Mitchell and went on to run it from 1997 to 2007. With the passage of 30 years, Tobin has seen the rise of streaming services, the shortening of theater runs from 10 weeks to three or less for most films, and the transition to digital overseen by he and his wife for the cinema in 2012.
As far as what remained intact, Tobin points to his love for the social experience of going to the movies and his willingness to show foreign films to audiences, regardless of what he sees as an aversion to subtitles on the part of much of the public. After all, two of his favorite films are in Italian: 1985’s “Cinema Paradiso” and 1991’s “Mediterraneo.”
Tobin and Lowell decided on Dec. 8 as their last day, with Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” serving as their final showing.
The couple plans to return and help out where they can, but also intend to spend more time with Lowell’s mother and their two dogs at their Fayetteville home.