Welcome to the Digital Age

“Kids are watching movies on their iPods,” says McCaffery, “which I just don’t get.” Today’s film fans can download or order DVDs of just about any film they want to see and literally watch it anywhere. And with HDTV and plasma screens, the home viewing experience is constantly improving. But both McCaffery and Collins are quick to point out that even a big screen TV is still not big compared to, say, the Michigan’s 51-foot movie screen, and the collective movie-going experience cannot be replicated.

Christian Bruno agrees. An independent filmmaker, Bruno is channeling his love of movie theaters into a film about art houses in the San Francisco Bay Area—“ground zero for the art house movement.”

In the darkness of the movie theater, says Bruno, “A viewer has basically laid themselves bare to the experience, immersed totally within it.”

Control plays a key part, he continues: “The viewer relinquishes simple things like what time the film will start, being able to stop and restart, the ability to manage one's life at all. Simple things like this are integral to the surrender that the cinematic experience requires. And one is rewarded with the ability to transcend time and space in a way that home viewing rarely allows.”

With the current economic crisis, Bruno maintains that people will need that escape more than ever, “to step out of one's own life, one's own world, into a place totally different, even for an hour and a half.”

The Movie-going Experience: Past Meets Present

For many art house fans, the transcendence of the movie-going experience is not only about the films, but also about the theater itself—oftentimes a historic building located near the city or town center.

Ross Melnick co-produces the Web site Cinema Treasures, dedicated to classic movie theaters and to preserving the movie-going experience. His site boasts a user-generated list of 23,000 theaters from 150 countries with updates added every five minutes. “We’ve gathered a worldwide community of people who love theaters,” says Melnick, who also co-authored the book Cinema Treasures.

“It’s called the architecture of fantasy,” he says, referring to the design of older theaters and movie palaces, many of which were fashioned in exotic and opulent styles.

But these theaters are more than the sum of their architectural features, says Melnick. “They are signposts of a city’s cultural life…vessels for memories”—from first dates to evenings out with the family—where “you sat and thought about other places, were exposed to new ideas.” The movie theater, says Melnick, carries tremendous emotional baggage—in the best sense of the term—for generations of theatergoers.

Facing Challenges

While beloved by many, smaller theaters have been struggling for decades, says Melnick, beginning in the 1960s and escalating with the explosion of suburban multiplex theaters in the 1970s. Multiplexes are more desirable to distributors due to the number of screens; parking is easier in the suburbs; and rising real estate costs and the maintenance required of older buildings have all put many classic theaters at risk.

One bright spot for art houses: Recent years have seen a growing openness among moviegoers to documentaries, foreign films and low-budget indie flicks, says Jan Klingelhofer, a former vice president at Landmark Theatres who currently consults with 20 independent theaters around the country. But the challenge remains as to how to publicize screenings of films at small theaters with next to no marketing money?

“It used to be that audiences read the paper and there was a movie critic with whom they would either agree or disagree. That’s how people would decide whether or not to go to a certain film. These reviews were worth thousands of dollars in publicity.” Not so anymore, notes Klingelhofer, as declining newspaper circulation has meant not only fewer readers, but also layoffs for many critics around the country.

And those independent films which do come with national publicity campaigns are increasingly difficult for smaller theaters to book. In Montgomery, McCaffery notes that most of the indie films his audience hears about on NPR are available to him two months afterwards, if at all. High profile films like Slumdog Millionaire go to the multiplex—and Milk, which McCaffery sought doggedly, was only available to him after the Academy Awards had aired, and two weeks before the film’s DVD release.

“Increasingly I’m showing films that no one has ever heard of,” says McCaffery.

Complicating matters further, Klingelhofer adds, “People have so many things competing for their attention—VOD, streaming, news on the Internet and Smart Phones. How do you get through the din?”

One answer is bringing in films that have a built-in constituency—films about social or ecological issues that tie into local community issues and organizations. “That’s where being a community-based theater really comes in. You have those connections. Theaters are a resource and a real-time gathering space,” notes Klingelhofer.

And in this age of virtual everything, Klingelhofer maintains, “People really do still want to be in the same place at the same time.”

Elizabeth Meyer is a Berkeley-based freelance writer and editor.

Check out the Art House Theater Map and comment about your favorite theaters >> What are your three all-time favorite films? Share your picks >>