The Cinemagic Theater is 113 years old and counting. Thus, the research process for this theater has been complicated and time consuming, although deeply interesting. The theater has had eight owners and been renamed eight times. I started out my research process by looking through the Oregon Historical Newspapers and the Media History Digital Library, or the Lantern, which gave me a baseline of the timeline of the theater. There were many entries in the ‘film’ section of the newspapers, in which there would be announcements of changes in ownership of theaters or closings. Through this, I was able to understand the shifts of the theater throughout time. Although, there were limited photos or descriptions of how and why the theater kept changing and what kinds of films they would exhibit. Early on in my research, I also found a Facebook group about the shift in ownership of Cinemagic and many patrons, and owners of the theater commented information. One useful thing I found through this was that the Seven Gables Theater Chain of Seattle owned a few theaters in Portland, such as Cinemagic, and showed independent, art house films.
The most fortuitous resource was using The Oregonian to find newspaper articles about Cinemagic. The articles were mostly from the 1990s when the theater reopened, but the information found in the articles about the theater's past proved very helpful. For example, I found out that the theater's owner in 1991, Gary Fine, reached out to George Lucas to gain approval to show Star Wars on the theater's opening day. I also found out information about the ticket prices, amount of seats, sound systems and what kind of films were shown.
