Tonight in theater we kick off the 253 Short Film Competition, an annual challenge in which 31 teams are given 72 hours to conceive, create and edit a short film (no more than 253 seconds) containing four criteria like a line of dialogue, prop, convention, and a phrase in a foreign language. Read on to learn more!

Read up on our Monday updates including information about our 19th birthday, our audio system upgrades, celebrations of Miles Davis with KPLU and more! 

The time has come: The Grand Cinema is ready to get our aging in-theater audio systems upgraded. And we need your help!

Help The Grand Cinema amp up its audio systems and raise the boom in our rooms!

There are also a lot of fun perks for supporting our project: at different donor levels you can enjoy private screenings, parties, and cool opportunities to sign the new speakers! Read on to learn more about the project and how you can help:

A perk of working at a movie theater is that occasionally I get to see movies before the general public. One such film was Boy and the World - my kids even got to see it to weigh-in on bringing it to The Grand. Oh yeah, they felt cool for sure. The film was breathtaking. We were a laughing, crying, and inspired bunch on the couch that evening as we watched, and as we talked about it for weeks afterward.

So it is with great excitement that The Grand Cinema will be bringing this film to its screens, right in the middle of Spring Break, so you can experience it too. Read more about how wonderful this film is:

Flooded with slapstick comedy, unpolished CGI effects, outlandish satire, and disguised as an unlikely romance between a business tycoon and a sea loving mermaid, The Mermaid finds a deeply contemporary way to explore environmental mindfulness through activism. A must see! Read on: