There is a book that chronicles the history of cinema in the Dominican Republic, and it reveals a type of cinema that was very popular in the country's neighborhoods: open-air cinemas where karate movies, cowboy films, El Santo, and Mexican ranchera music reigned supreme
SANTO DOMINGO. – The thunder of kicks, punches and howls of karate, kung fu and other martial arts fighters or the clinking of samurai and ninja swords; the gallop of horses, the gunshots in the desert or the rhythm of a mariachi band were heard, seen and felt in a different way, in a movie theater with the stars as a ceiling, without fans and with iron benches, like those in parks.
The popular cinemas of Santo Domingo showed two films per showing, the best one in the last, as described by Félix Manuel Lora and Martha Checo in the book "The Cinemas of the Dominican Republic", a work that also records where several of these cinemas were located and how, over the years, the public abandoned them.
“Those movie theaters were named after products. I remember two, the Siboney and the Montecarlo. It’s very similar to what they do today with soccer, baseball, and basketball stadiums, naming them after brands,” recalls Rafael Ortega, a sixty-something who draws a parallel with the current trend and remembers: “I have fond memories of going with my family to see the movie El Chanfle, by Chespirito, at a drive-in theater that used to be at the fair, near the Coca-Cola plant.”.
Before, there were tents
The book's introduction traces the evolution of theaters from the primitive tents of Fundador Vargas and Ciriaco Landolfi to neighborhood theaters and shopping centers.
Vargas's, opened in 1908 on the old University street, now Macorix, was a fair-style shack, made of demountable materials and exposed to the elements.
Landolfi's, from 1911, was a wooden kiosk in the courtyard of the Youth Casino, with a fabric screen that had to be wetted so that it would not wave.
In Colón Park, open-air cinemas were also promoted, Landolfi's in 1910 and Juan Bautista Alfonseca's in 1917, and films were projected from the rooftop of the old Hotel Colón towards the park, where the screen was located.
Three steps
In the book, the authors cite a series of articles published in El Nuevo Diario in 2017, signed by Rolando Robles, in which the author defined three categories of cinema in the capital:
- The first-run cinemas, in the Colonial Zone and Gascue, with air conditioning or a large ventilation system;
- Those on the second shift, on Duarte Avenue, which rarely had air conditioning;
- and the popular ones, spread throughout the neighborhoods and outdoors.
North of Capotillo Street, Mella Avenue since 1934, the text states, there were no first-run theaters. The online newspaper El Dinero refers to those located in the poorest neighborhoods as "third-run" theaters, and cites the Coloso, the Marlboro, the Montecarlo, and the Cinzano as examples of open-air cinemas.
With the horizontal growth of the capital, Robles adds, the theaters expanded towards the periphery even before the fall of the dictatorship.
The neighborhood was born from the cyclone, and the cinema in the neighborhood
Villa Consuelo, Villa Juana and Villa Francisca emerged after the San Zenón cyclone passed through the city in 1930, with a middle-class population that turned them into centers of commerce and cultural life, according to the book.
In Villa Francisca, the Julia Theater opened on January 21, 1942. Owned by Federico Geraldino, it boasted 1,050 seats in the orchestra section and 300 in the boxes, making it the largest and most popular theater in the country at the time. Lucho Gatica performed there in 1956, as did the Spanish singers Lola Flores and Paco Escribano. Political assemblies were also held there.
Opposite it operated the Brugal Coliseum, also called the Ramfis Coliseum and Ramfis Garden, a venue for boxing, wrestling and third-rate cinema.
Where were those rooms located?
The book places the Coloso north of Cristo Rey, in the Las Flores sector; the Marlboro, on Manuela Diez street, between Duarte and Hermanos Pinzón; and the Cinzano, on Albert Thomas, between Central and Padre Castellanos avenue.
Villa Consuelo had the two La Voz Dominicana movie theaters, the Alma (later Cupido), on Teniente Amado García Guerrero Street, and the Municipal Cinema, on the second floor of the market. The Janet, the Cometa, and the Satélite, on the border with Villa Juana, formed what the authors call a string of theaters, and on the corner of Teniente Amado García and Juana Saltitopa was the Radhamés, a third-rate movie theater named after Trujillo's youngest son, and on San Martín Avenue was the Ramfis.
In Villas Agrícolas, El Popular was built on Moca Street, almost at the corner of Félix Evaristo Mejía, and Ketty, on the corner of that same street and Marcos Ruiz; in the La Fe neighborhood, Luna was located on Paraguay Street, between 27th and 29th Streets. Balani, on the south side of 27 de Febrero Avenue, reached its peak in the 1970s and declined when the avenue was overpassed, affecting its access. The book's appendix also records a Superior cinema, without address or date.
Also outdoors, but for cars, were the drive-in theaters. The Iris opened in 1959 in the Centro de los Héroes; the Naco, in 1962, with a capacity for 300 vehicles, an 85 by 35 foot screen and the movie “Alias Jesse James”, and charged $1.50 per car and 50 cents to pedestrians; the Jacqueline, in December 1976, at kilometer 11 of Avenida Independencia.
Who were the owners?
Cines Dominicanos, SA (Cinedom), a company that the Turull-Mayol family created in 1971 to operate theaters in the country, had among its first administrations the Marlboro, the Cinzano, the Famosa and El Popular, according to the book, which does not name the owners of the other neighborhood theaters.
Del Cometa only indicates that the García Recio family's distribution company supplied him with films, just like they did with Max and Santomé.
The book lists Joaquín Ginebra as an owner and company; he managed the Rialto Circuit, which included the Rialto, the Élite, and the Santomé, and is listed as the owner of the Plaza and Leonor cinemas. Marco Gómez owned the Olimpia, inaugurated in 1941, and the Diana, from 1951, which was managed by Elpidio Ortega. The García Recio family owned the Max; Del Río Motors, the San Carlos; the Valverde family, the Paramount; and the Apolo company, the Atenas, managed by Dardo Hermann.
In the seventies came the circuits: Gometco Dominicana opened the Cine Triple in 1971 and, with Venezuelan and Dominican partners, including Ginebra, founded Inversiones Cinematográficas, which inaugurated the Palacio del Cine in November 1976. That same month, Caribbean Cinemas, created in Puerto Rico in 1969 by Víctor Carrady, opened Cinema Centro.
Some provinces had their own
Outside the capital, the book documents an open-air cinema: the Santiago Garden Cinema, which in the early forties operated on Libertad Street and later on Imbert Avenue, at the corner of Santiago Rodríguez.
The authors say it was a lower middle class cinema, with a small covered space that served as a second level for the projection machines and according to a note in the book, in May 2019 the mayor's office of Santiago painted a mural on what remains of its walls in homage to the actress María Montez and the critic José Méndez.
In San Francisco de Macorís, the Cine Carmelita, across from the park, showed Hollywood classics, Asian martial arts films, and Mexican comedies, recalls documentary filmmaker Tatiana Fernández Geara. It closed in the late 1990s and was demolished in 2005.
Were there more in other provinces? The book doesn't document any further. The closest thing are the traveling performances given by some Roma in La Vega and Santiago, and the stay of Fundador Vargas in La Vega in October 1908, at Linda Lora's house.
It doesn't say whether those performances were outdoors, nor does it mention tents outside the capital. That doesn't prove they didn't exist, only that the book doesn't include them.
One night at the Ketty
The poet and narrator César Sánchez Beras, who arrived in the capital at the beginning of 1978, evoked the Ketty in a chronicle that Acento published on March 16, 2025. He places it on Marcos Ruiz street, known as 20th, with its northern corner in Moca, and remembers it already in decline: a dirty doorway that could be seen from afar, vendors of freakish trinkets, a long line and a doorman nicknamed Goliath.
According to his account, the movie listings followed a fixed schedule: adult films on Mondays, action on Tuesdays, with titles such as "The Dirty Dozen" and "Papillon"; martial arts on Wednesdays, with Bruce Lee and Chen Kuan Tai; mystery on Thursdays, comedies on Fridays, with Cantinflas, the author's favorite, and suspense on Saturdays.
On Sundays there was a children's matinee in the afternoon (which was hardly ever shown) and, in the evening, two movies for the price of one. Between showings, he recounts, a young man on a Vespa would go to the Marlboro to get the reels from the showing that had just finished there.
The authors argue that the expansion of cinemas in the upper neighborhoods served as popular entertainment and as a counterweight to the repression of the Joaquín Balaguer years, especially between 1966 and 1978.
Why did they empty out?
Filmmaker Etzel Báez, in a 2017 article that includes the testimony of Bienvenido Olivier, linked to the exhibition industry, explained that the decline came with VHS and cable television.
He adds that Bruce Lee's karate movies lost popularity and that many people no longer wanted to pay admission for what they could watch on television.
The book explains that, in February 1983, businessmen, distributors and exhibitors began to organize the Incorporated Film Association to seek solutions to the crisis in the sector.
What's on today
The book states that the Max and Diana theaters on Duarte Avenue were converted into religious venues. According to Acento, in a June 24, 2025 article based on a study by the General Directorate of Cinema, the Olimpia theater was a television studio and is now the headquarters of the Christian Community Church at 169 Palo Hincado Street; and the Plaza Lama store operates where the Julia theater once stood, at 78 Duarte Avenue.
Where El Popular once stood, there's now a slingshot farm. Sánchez Beras doesn't know if the Ketty cinema is still standing, and in Villa Juana, the Narciso González Cultural Center organized open-air screenings of its "Cinema in the Neighborhood" program, as a way to commemorate the days of the Ketty and Cometa cinemas.
How do they remember them?
Marino Jiménez, a refrigeration technician living in the United States, recalled a prank that could have cost him dearly at the Cometa movie theater on Peña Batlle Street: “There was always a fight going on there with a gang that hung around, and one day I threw a Tumba Gobierno (a type of firework) with a slingshot and ran away; the next day I found out that they arrested three of the guys who were with me. Since I threw it from the doorway, they were so scared they didn't realize it was me,” he said, laughing heartily.
Daniela López, a police officer, hasn't forgotten the night her uncles took her to see "La Ley del Monte," a Mexican comedy, and during the first showing she endured a barrage of flying kicks. "I got comfortable, took off my shoes, and crossed my legs. When the movie ended, they took one of my shoes! Pure malice, because they didn't take both. I'll never forget that incident; it happened at the Popular Theater," she recalls, her eyes burning as if it had happened just last night.
Ortega also remembers the movie theaters on Duarte Avenue: “As far as I can recall, there was one across from Enriquillo Park on the Duarte side… there was one, I don’t remember the name. I was never taken there, but it was one of the first to disappear, and they later built Almacenes Rodríguez there. On the same Duarte Avenue, down the hill, there was another one that I never went to, but I did go into a two-story house on the corner; it had a balcony in the back, and they charged a few cents to watch the movies from there.”.
In the provinces, the experience was different. Some towns, like Tamayo, didn't have these cinemas, as journalist Riammy Méndez recounted, while others, like Tania Molina, a journalist from Monte Cristi, watched films through community screenings.
“It was a white wall in the Community Center and they projected movies there,” says Tania Molina, who doesn’t remember the title or the plot.
Other old rooms in Santo Domingo
The appendix on “Movie Theaters in the Dominican Republic” also lists these older theaters in the capital, including drive-in theaters, institutional cinemas, and multiplexes:
The Los Mina neighborhood was one of the areas in Santo Domingo that had movie theaters. (Photo/General Archive of the Nation).
Apollo, Ana, Athens, Arelis, Aurora, Avenue, Bolivar, Broadway, Brugal, Las Caobas, Capitolio, Caribe, Crisagris, Cinemateca Kitcher, Cineclub Casa de Francia, University Cultural Cinema (UASD), Colonial, Columbus, Copy, Doble, Duarte, El Encanto, Estela, Eva, Elite, Famosa, Phoenix, Las Flores, Giant, Hector, Ivonne, Independence, Issfa, Jenny, Joffy, Joseph, Landolfi, Leonor, Letty, Liberty, Lido, Lumière, Lux.
Also Luchy, Manzana Cinemas, Malecón Center Cinemas, Mi Cine, Militar de las Fuerzas Armadas, Millón, Naco, Cineplex Naco, Nacional, Naty, La Nueva Pelota, Oratorio Don Bosco, Ozama, Palacio del Cine 27 de Febrero, Palacio del Cine Bella Vista Mall.
The Triple Nacional, Plaza, Paramount, Los Padres-Colegio San Juan Bosco, Portal, Perla, Petit, Pidoca, Los Prados, Premier, Cine Prueba, Ray, La Republicana, Rialto, San Carlos, San Miguel, Santomé, Siboney, Travieso, Trianón, Triple, Venus, Villa Consuelo.
What remains
Besides the nostalgia and memories of youth, of those experiences, when passing by the Popular one sees piles of tires and car parts; of the Ketty it is not known if that building still exists or if it was converted and of the Superior only the name remains in the appendix of the book by Lora and Checo.
The authors wanted to reflect, as they write in their introduction, the identity that movie theaters represent as "temples of entertainment".
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