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In This Section

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Mission of Mercy How two Vanderbilt med students, a Kenyan clinic and a Nashville filmmaker are healing the world, one patient at a time

 

 

In This Issue

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Confederacy of Dunces

Colonoscopy for Hire Like a lawn or laundry service—only with laxatives

Mission of Mercy How two Vanderbilt med students, a Kenyan clinic and a Nashville filmmaker are healing the world, one patient at a time

 

 

By This Author

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There Will Be Blood Torture for our amusement? Let the Games begin!

Dawn of the Georgia Dead Bringing zombie horror to the heartland, The Signal comes through loud and clear

Ready to Roll Upcoming Nashville Film Festival offers a peek

Right Between the Eyes Exhibit A for Lee Marvin as the toughest of the tough guys

Montana in Middle Tennessee?

A Vote of No Confidence Can the electoral process be scattered, smothered and hacked? Nashville filmmaker David Earnhardt says yes.

Universal Soldier Our one-man military machine’s still going

 

 

The Author

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Jim Ridley

Jim Ridley is a senior writer and movie critic for the Nashville Scene.

 

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This glimpse of the future comes courtesy of the December 2012 Nfocus—but we still have a chance to avert it. This Saturday at 10 a.m., the Belcourt Theatre will hold the first in a series of community meetings to determine the cinema’s long-range goals. Should it bring in more celebrities—like this weekend’s sold-out appearance by Diary of the Dead director George A. Romero—or start a festival exclusively for local filmmakers? Should it serve more food and show more classics? Should it keep the two existing auditoriums, or break the newer 1966 side into smaller stadium-seating screening rooms?

Similar questions were raised back in 1999 when the Belcourt held community meetings about its future. The big difference, says Belcourt managing director Stephanie Silverman, is that the meetings then were held out of desperation: The theater had just been saved by grass-roots effort from a temporary but traumatic closing. In the intervening decade, however, the Belcourt has hit upon a winning combination of first-run indie and foreign films, concerts, live theater and outside rentals. Last November, the theater’s nonprofit organization became strong enough to purchase the building outright from landlord and co-founding member Thomas Wills.

“The dreams, desires and fantasies [people had in 1999] about the Belcourt have mostly been achieved,” Silverman says. “Now we need to set up the next set of mile markers.” Among the theater’s current concerns, she notes, are the need for educational outreach; ways to get more of the theater’s lucrative and popular music shows onto the calendar; short-term fixes in seating and bathrooms; and above all, more space—not just for the cramped upstairs offices, but also for audiences to hang out and talk.

Other cities have indie-theater success stories worth examining: Austin’s beloved Alamo Drafthouse, with its cult-movie mania and themed dinner menus; Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theatre, which has a multiuse mix similar to the Belcourt’s; Omaha’s Film Streams, whose stouthearted owner Rachel Jacobson was profiled in last Sunday’s New York Times. But for now the Belcourt just wants to hear what Nashville wants. Silverman invites anyone with ideas to come down Saturday morning for free donuts, coffee, popcorn and sodas.

So close your eyes. Think of a theater you’d drive 500 miles to visit, and what you’d want to see there. Hold that thought, bring it with you Saturday morning, and prepare to lay it out so everyone else can share the same vision. And while you’re waiting, have a donut.

(Local filmmakers and arts patrons share their ideas for the Belcourt online at the Scene’s blog, Pith in the Wind.)