Movie Posters

In the lobby of Marina Picture Palace, Rosebery, two film posters lean against a wall from which the paint is lifting in long strips. One is for Big. The other is in Greek. Above a doorway, a hand-lettered sign with a pointing arrow directed patrons toward the Greek-language screenings. Price boards listing separate weekday and weekend rates still hang near what was once the ticket counter. White debris, possibly plaster fall, scatters across the concrete floor. The signage is a direct record of the Louis Film Company era. Chris and Chaniglia Louis purchased the Marina in 1967, with Chris Louis buying the cinema in honour of his wife, whose name was also Marina. The Louis family operated over 18 theatres around Sydney and specialised in continental and Greek-language films in the years before SBS television brought that programming into living rooms across the country. The price boards and the hand-lettered sign are what remained of that trade when the cinema closed its doors as a cinema on 8 February 1984. After 1984, the Louis family converted the stalls area into a video and DVD shop. A steel-lined room was built in the north-eastern corner for secure video storage, and a partition wall carried the price boards and the Greek movies sign forward into a new use. The dress circle was taken out of service. The original seating was sold and dispersed to other Inter-War theatres across the city. Marina Picture Palace opened on 28 May 1927, designed by architect William de Putron, who was also a consortium member alongside builder William Henry Rumble and cinema pioneer Eric Christensen. It is the only surviving pre-World War Two theatre in the former Botany Bay local government area, and the only cinema known to have been designed by de Putron. The building is a local heritage item under the Bayside Local Environmental Plan 2021. As of 2019, the lobby remained as the Louis family left it.