Feature
The one-screen cinemas selling out on a Tuesday
Multiplexes are closing screens. In small towns, volunteer-run picture houses are adding showings. The difference is who picks the films.
Film critic
7 min read
Volunteers choose the films and run the bar. A ticket costs less than a sandwich.
On a wet Tuesday in October every one of the 142 seats is taken. The film is forty years old, the projector is older, and the woman tearing tickets also wrote the programme notes.
Small cinemas like this one were supposed to be finished.
Programmed by the audience
The model is simple. Members vote on a shortlist each month, the committee books what it can afford, and nothing runs for more than three nights. Scarcity does the marketing.
We stopped trying to show everything and started showing what people would cross town for.
Costs are low because almost nobody is paid, which is also the weakness. Three of the eleven cinemas we visited depend on a single volunteer who knows how the projector works.
What the chains noticed
Two national chains have begun renting out their smallest screens to local film clubs on weeknights. It fills seats that were empty anyway, and it is an admission that curation, not screen size, sells a ticket.
Topics
Kenji Moreau
Film critic
Kenji has reviewed more than two thousand films and still sits in the front row.
