In Miami, March is the cruelest month. You would have to take a month’s leave from work to keep up with all the culture surging through town. For starters, there’s Miami Made, a festival of new works by local artists at the Arsht Center all day everyday this weekend (more on that tomorrow). Carnaval Miami kicks off tomorrow night with Carnaval on the Mile running through the weekend, then culminates in the world’s biggest street fair, Calle Ocho. But then so does the Miami International Film Festival, running from gala to gala all across town, through March 14. After that, we get nine days to rest up before Winter Music Conference convulses the county with electric beats. That’s why I appreciated a little calm before the storm last night during a hard hat tour of the under-construction Coral Gables Art Cinema.

This 144-seat cinema with funky, sort-of Egyptian columns out front promises to be, according to the postcards handed out last night, “a film festival all year round.” No need to pack it all in March!

Directing the effort is festival veteran Robbie Rosenberg. Standing in front of the newly installed comfy theater seats, his back to a yawning open space on the wall where the movie screen and a small stage will go, Rosenberg pledged to bring cutting edge, even “kinky, for Coral Gables” programming. With a half million dollars donated by the City of Coral Gables and the Coral Gables Community Foundation (including a deal on the space rental, in a corner of a municipal parking lot, which has been built out from the old dirt floor) and another $400,000 in cinema equipment (from the seats to a four-loader 33mm projector) donated by the film industry, this cozy cinema with state-of-the-art projection and sound should be running this spring (yes, this spring that we’re approaching right now). The Coral Gables Cinemateque, the nonprofit that runs the theater, is now soliciting members at a starting price of $60 (kick in $1000 or more and you get your name engraved somewhere).

Across the street from Books & Books, Gables Cinema will host a small cafe with tables outside among the columns, making this easily the most intellectual corner in the county.