One Saturday evening in October, a few dozen people gathered at the Metrograph theater on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to watch a faded, scratched, missing-some-frames 35-millimeter print of All the President’s Men. Seen flickering on the larger of the theater’s two screens, the paranoia of this classic political thriller from 1976 felt tenser, the laughs bigger, the stakes higher. The audience fed off the film’s energy, and each other’s. Two-plus hours later, viewers buoyantly filed into a lobby buzzing with activity. Moviegoers leaving one screening mingled with those waiting for another. Friends huddled over plans for the night. Strangers discussed films, books, the neighborhood. It was the kind of experience watching a movie at home can never provide. And it’s endangered.
The nonprofit National Cinema Foundation reported that, in 2022, there were more than 39,000 movie screens in the United States, down from more than 41,000 in 2019. More have been lost in the years since. Theaters large and small have steadily closed, creating cinema deserts in cities and towns across America. In early 2024, Indiewire reported that Chicago’s South Side and its 1.2 million people now only have 18 screens across two theaters. Rutland, Vermont, population 16,000, doesn’t have a movie theater within 40 miles.
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