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…