When a movie theater closes up shop, it often catches us by surprise.
It isn’t that we don’t see it coming; we all know by now about Netflix, Hulu, and Redbox, and how the ever-expanding options of cable television and the Internet have siphoned off some of the traditional theater crowd. By the time the doors are locked for the last time, many of us might not have been inside for the better part of a year. Still, we see it coming; that is not the surprise. The surprise is that we miss it when it’s gone.
I worked at Northampton’s Pleasant Street Theater for many years before it closed up shop (it eventually reopened under Amherst Cinema’s management before closing again, for good, in 2012), and even today I run into people on the street — strangers except for the times I saw them at the ticket counter — who want to stop and wax nostalgic about the old cinema. And as anyone who ever saw a movie there could tell you, it was not the best place in the world to see a movie. But it was our place.
This week, one such story has a happier ending; after a long shutdown and complicated renovation, the much loved Agawam Cinemas has reopened its doors under the leadership of new owner Kimberly Wheeler. A local who grew up going to the movies there, Wheeler, who described the closing as “heartbreaking,” decided to do everything she could to save the theater. One Kickstarter campaign and many construction setbacks later, Wheeler’s drive is finally bearing fruit. The ribbon was cut last Friday by Shari Baker, whose father Vic built the original Jerry Lewis Cinema that began the Suffield Street cinema tradition back in the 1960s. And yes, as many Kickstarter backers wanted to know, the infamous leaks in the ceiling have been repaired. But while some parts of the theater have been modernized — the projection is all digital, now — others are still decidedly old-world: Agawam will deliver your concessions right to your seat.
The other big change is that Agawam is now a first-run theater, showing new releases when they are first available instead of having to wait for them to pass through bigger cinemas. Opening week screenings include The Peanuts Movie and the new James Bond movie Spectre. If you’re a fan of locally owned theaters, better to celebrate them while they’re here than regret them when they’re gone.
Also this week: A few special shows are coming to the Amherst area beginning with Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholem Aleichem, a dual documentary about two giants of Jewish culture that screens at the Yiddish Book Center at 2 p.m. Sunday. The Oscar-nominated Bikel was most famous for his long run as Tevye the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof; a musical based on Aleichem’s stories, but was also an accomplished musician and activist. And at Amherst Cinema, the Radiant Matter: Experiments in Handmade Cinema event brings a variety of directors to the theater as part of the wider X: Unknown Quantity series. This particular program focuses on hand-painted, hand-processed, or otherwise hand-altered film in response to the slow death of the traditional film industry in the face of a digital age. It gets underway Monday at 7:30 p.m., with filmmaker Kerry Laitala appearing in person for a Q&A with Josh Guilford, visiting assistant professor of English in film and media studies at Amherst College.
In addition to Laitala’s work, the series will present pieces from Stan Brakhage, Tomonari Nishikawa, and Mark Street, whose Fulton Fish Market doc shows a hidden vibrancy in the behind-the-scenes life of a New York institution.•
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
