The year was 1985 and a young Laurier graduate had a passion and an idea, which 40 years later has grown into one of the most beloved hidden gems of the Uptown Waterloo community. John Tutt, the owner of Princess Cinemas, has created a space where students and community members can enjoy a different kind of movie experience that focuses on showing foreign films, cult classics, vintage horror, retro movies, and popular throwbacks from the 2000’s. It is a stark contrast to the programming at Galaxy Cinemas which aims more towards mainstream blockbuster movies starring actors such as Glen Powell or Sydney Sweeney. Not only does Princess Cinemas have a connection with the Waterloo community as a whole, but it has had a long standing relationship with UW and its students that dates back to its early days when it was advertised in UW’s very own Imprint in the 1980’s.
Tutt was 25 when he first started Princess Cinemas, handing out thousands of flyers to cafes and bookstores to spread the word about what the cinema was all about. He started off by buying a couple of 16 millimetre projectors, smaller than the industry standard at the time which was 35 millimetres, and began renting films and putting on programs. When Tutt married his wife, Wendy, in 1993, it marked the beginning of the Princess Cinemas as a family business. The couple worked hard to grow the cinemas together and later had a son, Jacob Tutt, who would go on to inherit his parents’ love for the theatre and be a central figure in carrying on their hard work and legacy. Jacob reminisced about his earliest memories working at the cinemas at 13, serving popcorn to the moviegoers. While the movies are now shown digitally, the theatre still gives a retro and nostalgic feeling as soon as you enter the doors that transports you back to another time.
The cinema started as just the one theatre located on Princess Street in Uptown Waterloo, but has now grown to include the Twin Cinemas on King Street, and The Playhouse in Hamilton, another cinema which focuses on non-mainstream films. Jacob Tutt focuses on running the Hamilton location now as John Tutt starts handing over the reins to other dedicated members of their team. One of these staff members who embodies the love and spirit of the cinema is Sophia Irwin, who has been working at Princess Cinemas for seven years and is currently in the position of cinema programmer and assistant manager. Irwin is also a Wilfrid Laurier University alumna, but has wanted to work at Princess Cinemas from even before she started university. “I was a huge movie buff already, and I had some friends in high school who had worked at Princess, and it had always been a dream of mine,” explained Irwin in an interview with Imprint. Irwin originally started off as a snack bar nighttime manager, and after four years, worked her way up to the position she currently has.
The strength and passion of this family business was on full display back in September when the cinema celebrated its 40th anniversary. Princess celebrates annually by showing the first film it ever played, Casablanca. However to mark this particular milestone, Princess Cinemas also hosted a block party after the film this year, and played Stop Making Sense, a widely popular concert film. Over 200 people attended the event to show support and have fun along with many UW students. Andie Kaiser, a UW master’s student who attended the Casablanca showing, highlighted why she thinks having a place like Princess Cinemas in the UW community is so important: “I think we’re really lucky because a lot of towns that aren’t in, say Toronto, don’t have a lot of art house cinemas … so it’s really nice to be able to have,” said Kaiser.
John Tutt explained how it is usually upper-year UW students who discover Princess Cinemas after being in the community for a few years and figure out what they are all about. However the cinema has a long standing connection with the school. GLOW has historically partnered with Princess Cinemas to host an event called Rainbow Reels, where the cinema played queer-related films that did not get much showtime in the 90’s when they were originally released. Additionally, the cinema, for 25 years, partnered with the film studies program, now integrated into visual culture studies, to award a student the Princess Cinemas Award where they would receive 30 movie passes for the year.
One of the biggest events connected to UW that John Tutt recalls was a month-long run of the BlackBerry movie back in 2023 centered around a Community Screening Day, where they hosted ex-engineers and staff from BlackBerry who attended UW. The movie tells the story of the inventor of the Blackberry, Mike Lazaridis who is a UW alumnus and was UW chancellor from 2003-2009. “Blackberry was very much a creation that was born out of UW [from ex-students], and we had on display about 30 or 40 of the original BlackBerry pagers and cell phones in the lobby,” said the Princess Cinemas owner.
The cinema has also shown many UW student made films over the years. Kai Reimer-Watts is a UW alumnus who graduated from his master’s in climate change in 2014 and had his film, Beyond Crisis, premiere at the Twin Princess Cinemas location in 2017. The film was a multi-year endeavor which started in 2014 during global calls to address the climate change crisis. The film was a grassroots production and worked with a small budget, inspired after the filmmakers attended mass climate change protests in New York City. The film includes key voices speaking out on climate change from across the United States and Canada.
After its premiere at the Twin Princess Cinemas, the film went on a North American festival tour and has now been shown all over the world. Reimer-Watts said he had a great experience showing the film at Princess Cinemas, adding staff were accommodating and supportive. He also discussed how having a place that provides a platform for less mainstream films that are not as “palatable” to the general public or are more relevant to specific communities, like Princess Cinemas, is important. “[Waterloo is] a very diverse region… we have multiple universities of higher education here, and that should be reflected in the media content that is released, not to–have this homogeneous one size fits all, but to actually support independent filmmaking,” Reimer-Watts said.
Bringing new and interesting films to Princess Cinemas is an ongoing team effort, however one of the most anticipated seasons of the year to bring in new films is the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). While there, Irwin and Jacob Tutt, along with other team members, sought out films that they think will connect with their audiences. They often look for films from distributors that Princess has worked with before, independent Canadian distributors, festival “darlings,” and films that generate a buzz. Irwin described the experience of attending TIFF as being “a really fun time to connect with movie lovers and bring that love and connection back to Princess and to Waterloo.”
While the cinema is clearly thriving and has a dedicated community of passionate moviegoers who love the alternate experience Princess Cinemas provides, there have been discussions, particularly during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, about how the rise of online streaming and mobile media will affect the movie theatre industry. While streaming services have been on the rise for over a decade, the pandemic saw a drastic increase in the use of services such as Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video, and Apple TV, due to restrictions on seeing movies in person according to StatsCan.
The question of whether the movie theatre industry is dying has been becoming more frequent over the last few years, but Irwin urges that this might not actually be the case. The assistant manager argued that this concern is not new and was raised before when the use of DVD’s became a popular household item. Irwin went on to state, “I think in a post-COVID world, as much as young people have so much access to media, so much access to streaming services, it becomes really overwhelming… so, I think post-2020, a lot of people are looking for, not only community, but a place where they don’t have to make those decisions.”
John Tutt explained that while he thinks the different experience they offer at Princess Cinemas draws people in, they have also had to be conscious of the rise of online streaming and become “sharper” in their programming. “You have to be able to make sure that the films and events that you have in your theater can battle… online streaming noise that people are exposed to and to make your event special and different.”
Princess Cinemas also offers a membership program with a student pricing option. Regular membership pricing is $16, while any university, college, or high school student with a valid student ID, can become a member for only $11. With the membership you can get $4 off of regular priced tickets and 35mm film screenings along with a discount at the snack bar and free entry into Free-for-members screenings. Membership can be purchased either online or in-person when you buy a movie ticket.
