Through more than a century of changing names, owners, and renovations, ROC Cinema has always been a community theater. Built in 1914, the one-room movie theater at the corner of Clinton Avenue and Goodman Street in Rochester has led many lives—traditional live theater, decades of the silver screen, and, more recently, the occasional wedding.
“We knew when we bought the theater, we were going to be more than movies,” owner Kristina Dinino-Jeffords says.
Dinino-Jeffords and her husband took over the theater in 2021, modernizing the once charmingly worn-down movie house into a comfortable and elevated experience which clings tightly to its roots as a neighborhood spot for affordable date nights and family outings. With rolling, oversized office chairs and breakfast-bar-like tables for the theater’s full-service food and bar menu, ROC Cinema hints at the luxury of big-box theaters like Tinseltown in Gates while maintaining an identity that is unmistakably Rochester.
When Dinino-Jeffords, who also owns the Mad Hatter Restaurant and Bakery in Rochester’s Park Avenue neighborhood, bought the theater, she designed it from the top down to incorporate live performances, birthday parties, community events, and corporate conferences.
With a weekly open mic comedy night, quarterly Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings (if you know, you know), and a full season of Buffalo Bills football slated for the theater, it’s clear that ROC Cinema meets a need for a community space at the intersection of artistic performance, sports, and entertainment.
“It’s a unique space, and we want to promote it as that,” Dinino-Jeffords says.
She says leaning into alternative forms of entertainment was a decision of necessity as much as it was a vision for the future of the tiny theater. Overhead costs like licensing for movie screenings make profitability on tickets alone a near impossibility, but mixing in other events, screenings, and performances, alongside food and drink sales, means Dinino-Jeffords gets to keep this century-old pillar of the South Wedge community running.
“That’s a reason why big box theaters sell popcorn for fifteen dollars. It’s how they stay alive,” she says, adding “we are a real bar and a real restaurant.”
In a past life as the Cinema Theater, the space was legendary for its double features and second-run showings. Decades and decades of ticket stubs, branded napkins, and other sentimental litter lived in the theater’s crevices, Dinino-Jeffords says. When she took over the theater, she found boxes of old memorabilia, film reels, and other historical artifacts. Each is given the same spotlight at the theater’s exit: Framed midcentury candy wrappers and napkins sit next to historical photos and old movie theater equipment.
“We are proud to be in this neighborhood,” says Dinino-Jeffords. “We don’t want to go anywhere.”
But the history of the theater dates back to even before the silver screen. When it first opened as the Clinton (then also affectionately called the “Flea Pit” for its iconic dirt floor), the space was predominantly set up for live performances. It wasn’t until about the 1950s that the theater began focusing on movies, Dinino-Jeffords says. Now, she says the theater has come full circle in a way, again offering live performances as the theater balances all of its previous elements to create something truly unique.
“We want people to enjoy themselves and spread out,” Dinino-Jeffords says. “We want them to indulge and have fun.”
Even with calls back to each of the theater’s histories, Dinino-Jeffords says some stalwarts of the South Wedge neighborhood have had a difficult time accepting this new iteration of ROC Cinema. To the holdouts, she says to give the new place a try and see that ROC Cinema is still a theater built specifically with the neighborhood in mind.
“Our air conditioning is always blasting,” she says.
The walk is reasonable to ROC Cinema from most neighborhoods in Rochester’s southeast and southwest quadrants, and a summertime matinee of Shin Godzilla sounded like a great way for me to get the full ROC Cinema experience.
The last showing of the Japanese language film, first released in 2016 but rereleased in the summer in 4K high definition, was sparsely attended. Two groups sat in a sea of about 100 chairs to send off the movie before an upcoming run of director Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing.
To be sure, the American film by an Oscar-nominated director brought more eyeballs than a rerelease of a foreign language horror romp. But a new vision of a ubiquitous intellectual property felt more spiritually connected to the theater itself.
There have been dozens of Godzilla films released since the original in 1954, and each one acts as a touchstone for the ways culture has changed, in Japan and across the world, reflecting the tastes of an ever evolving moviegoing population.
A cold brew coffee from downtown Rochester’s Fuego Coffee Roasters was ushered to a seat in the back right corner of the theater, followed by a made-to-order meal from the theater’s full kitchen. The only other group in the theater was served a feast of popcorn, fresh flatbread pizza, and drinks that would keep anyone satisfied through the two-hour runtime.
As the film played, it was hard not to think of all the other people who sat in this room watching an earlier installment of Godzilla, at an earlier time, in an earlier iteration of the one-room theater that could. roccinema.com
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of (585).
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