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Cineforum folding?

Reg Hartt is closing the Cineforum, and this time he says it’s for real.

The Bathurst St. movie house – which is also Hartt’s actual house – has been a Toronto institution for three decades, but if a posting on Hartt’s website is to believed its days are numbered thanks to a bizarre spat with a local postering company.

Anyone who has been downtown for more than a few minutes is likely familiar with Hartt’s handiwork. His ubiquitous posters advertising sex and violence cartoon festivals and Dali films are as definitive of Toronto’s urban landscape as the CN Tower or glass-walled condos.

But in papering the city with his flyers Hartt appears to have run afoul of Jamie Gillis, who runs a postering service called Dr. Jamie’s Events out of the Oak Leaf Steam Baths, a few blocks north of the Cineforum. According to Hartt, Gillis is behind a postering blitz that accuses him of being a child pornography and alleges that one of his housemates, Daniel Goggin, has been secretly videotaping drug dealers.

“The slander he is spreading is the same as yelling, ‘Fire,’ in a theater,” writes Hartt on his website.

“The clear intent… is that an enraged drug dealer will come here and kill Daniel (and everyone else here).

“In view of that I have no real choice but to shut down The Cineforum. I can not risk your life. I can not risk lives of the people who share this house with me.”

So is the really the end of Toronto’s quirkiest movie theatre? Maybe not.

It could be a bit early to say the Cineforum will close for good. Gillis and Hartt have a long-running feud, and last year Hartt said he was being forced to shut down thanks to numerous complaints Gillis lodged against him with the city’s municipal licensing and standards commission.

That’s when an unlikely hero stepped forward Rob Ford (who’s launched something of a crusade against posters since taking office) reportedly intervened on Hartt’s behalf to ensure he kept the projector running.

Perhaps a well-placed call to the mayor’s office can sort this situation out as well. Ford’s not busy with anything else these days, is he?

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