{"id":92956,"date":"2025-12-22T21:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T21:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/92956\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T21:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T21:42:10","slug":"kb-council-picks-name-for-new-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/92956\/","title":{"rendered":"KB Council picks name for new cinema"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With the Key Biscayne Film Festival about a month away, the Council wasted no time at its Tuesday meeting in christening the island\u2019s new theater inside Town Hall chambers.<\/p>\n

The name \u2013 drumroll please \u2013 is Paradise Cinema. It beat out Island Reel House and Cinema Paradiso. The Village put a call out in November to name the movie house.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great news is we got 82 submissions,\u201d Village Manager Steve Williamson said. \u201cSo that means people are interested in this. The difficulty is, we had to narrow this down to a couple of choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Council Member Fernando Vazquez liked Island Reel House. \u201cI\u2019m a little old-fashioned, old school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Council Member Michael Bracken, however, said Paradise Cinema was his choice, but then he became torn between the two. Mayor Joe Rasco voted for Paradise Cinema and soon Council Members Ed London and Vice Mayor Oscar Sardi\u00f1as<\/a> came on board.<\/p>\n

Council Members Nancy Stoner and Frank Caplan were not present to vote.<\/p>\n

Paradise Theater \u2013 or some version of it \u2013 is historical. Cinema Paradiso is a 1988 Italian film classic. It is also the name of a popular album by the rock band Styx that centered on the lifespan of a well-known movie theater in Chicago.<\/p>\n

The idea of converting the Council Chambers into a dual-use space arose due to the overwhelming popularity of the film festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Isabel Custer, artistic director and programmer for the film festival, said the name choice \u201cwas definitely in line with my sentiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Never miss a story! Sign up for our FREE newsletter<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are third to offer part of the Third Annual Key Biscayne Film Festival in the Paradise Cinema, which is a huge advancement for us,\u201d Custer said.<\/p>\n

Cinema, she said, needs to be viewed in certain conditions and atmosphere with high quality screen and projector, and finely tuned audio. The Community Center served as a makeshift theater for the last two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo recreate a movie theater in one of the rooms of the Community Center, it ran at a very high cost,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She gave a shoutout to Claire London and Mary Tague, who lobbied the Council to create the theater. Council Member Ed London, the spouse of Claire, supported the plans, as well. Rasco even quipped during the meeting that maybe it should be called the Ed London Theater.<\/p>\n

The Key Biscayne Film Festival runs from Jan 29 through Feb. 1.<\/p>\n

Invest in Local News for Your Town. Your Gift is tax-deductible<\/a><\/p>\n

\"John<\/a><\/p>\n

JOHN PACENTI is a correspondent of the Key Biscayne Independent. John has worked for The Associated Press, the Palm Beach Post, Daily Business Review, and WPTV-TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the Key Biscayne Film Festival about a month away, the Council wasted no time at its Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49686,25534,589,49687,9887,123,125,124,49688],"class_list":["post-92956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-claire-london","tag-ed-london","tag-featured","tag-isabel-custer","tag-key-biscayne-film-festival","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-paradise-cinema"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}