Screen queens
Dec. 29—You've probably seen them while driving though any number of small towns in New Mexico — dead, dying, or desperate small-town movie theaters.
Faded beauties, you might call them.
For those who grew up in these small-town hotspots of cultural identity, the sight of those beauties' decaying facades and thoughts of their abandoned innards might stir fond or sad memories of days long gone by.
Maybe it was the place you enjoyed holding hands with your steady while you watched a film, or perhaps where you and your date could make out in the back row, only to get caught by an usher who told you to knock it off or get out. (Speaking for myself, I'd usually get out and look for another place to make out.)
If you were real lucky, sitting just a few rows away, you'd see your ex fighting with his or her current beau.
During their heyday, these main street cinemas offered a communal experience that also spoke to the vibrancy of small-town America. Many are long gone, replaced by banks, churches, or warehouses. Some sit like silent ghosts, whose wails of despair cannot be heard.
DETAILS
Last Frame of Picture, Small Town Movie Theaters
Photography exhibit by Howard Stein
February 1-29, 2024
Vista Grande Public Library
4 Avenida Torreon, Eldorado
505-466-7323; vglibrary.org
But many are holding on, looking for financial and community help to keep their marquees lit, seats full, and screens lit. Thankfully, a state Economic Development Department initiative is helping some of them do just that.
The New Mexico Historic Theaters Initiative, which started in 2013, partners with the New Mexico MainStreet program to provide funding to publicly owned cinemas located in main street districts to pay for renovations and digital-projection upgrades.
To date, the project has provided $3 million in capital outlay money to help 11 historic theaters in such cities and communities as Alamogordo, Carlsbad, Gallup, Lovington, Raton, and Silver City.
"A lot of them are going black, especially in rural communities," says Daniel Gutierrez, director of the Economic Development Department's New Mexico MainStreet program, of our state's historic movie houses. "They didn't have the funding to update to digital projection and sound, so people were leaving."
Although the digital revolution is not the only challenge facing these small-town cinemas — it's less profitable to run a one- or two-screen cinema, especially in a downtown that may be struggling to keep its lights on as well — it was a stimulus for the state to get involved in saving some of these beauties, he says.
There's an economic benefit to bringing these buildings back to life, Gutierrez adds, because many of these cinemas serve as an "anchor institution."
"If you are going to see a movie, you are likely to go to lunch or dinner, shop downtown, see an activity you might want to engage in that you may not have seen otherwise," he says. "[Cinemas] do draw people downtown. They help keep open local businesses around them."
Love for the Lovington theater
Mara Salcido gets that. The director of Lovington MainStreet grew up in the rural Southeastern New Mexico town of about 11,000 people and still fondly recalls going to the Lea Theater on Central Avenue. The cinema, which opened in the late 1940s, operated pretty steadily until about 15 years ago, when the projection system started having problems.
Then it shut down for a while, and then reopened, and then came the COVID pandemic, when it shut down again, she says.
It's quiet and dark now, awaiting some attention that will get its hot pink and green marquee glowing again. The city of Lovington owns the roughly 270-seat theater and is taking advantage of the Economic Development Department program to the tune of $400,000 to help with renovations for the stage, sound, and lightning systems.
"It's one of the town's memories," Salcido says, adding she considers the cinema "my baby." She's hoping her baby will be back up and running by the summer of 2025.
The state monies won't be enough to fully reopen the theater, but Salcido says those trying to save the theater are seeking other funding sources and recently conducted a penny drive to replace the floor, which is made out of pennies. (They've raised $3,000 in pennies so far.)
Her organization is looking to raise a total of $1.3 million — it will cost $300,000 just to revive the marquee alone, she says — and it has raised about $1 million of that so far.
"It's an old building," she says of the venerable Lea. "It needs a lot of love and care."
In addition, she says the cinema is essential to the heart of Lovington and that the marquee is "a beacon of light to highlight the community is not dying, there are things going on, there are efforts to revive the area, because the community wants it."
The flicker of the future
But occasionally, community love is not enough.
Too many small-town cinemas around the country have shuttered, according to photographer Howard Stein's estimate. Throughout his cross-country travels, he has photographed more than 440 small-town movie theaters in 26 states, including about two dozen in New Mexico. Not all are closed for good, he says, but many of them are.
"Some have gone dark after I photographed them," says Stein, whose photography exhibition, Last Frame of Picture, Small Town Movie Theaters, opens on February 1 at the Vista Grande Public Library in Eldorado. The show runs through the end of February.
His black-and-white images evoke a sense of nostalgia for what were once elegant movie houses, now gone to seed, that spoke to who we were as a community.
His cinema-photo craze started after Stein, who now lives in Eldorado but grew up in northern New York in the late 1940s, came across the boarded-up Ritz theater in Natchez, Mississippi, and photographed it nearly 20 years ago during a cross-country road trip with one of his brothers. The two kept heading west, and Stein kept shooting small cinemas — some open, some closed.
He says New Mexico's efforts to help small theaters is wonderful to see. "I don't know what the future of that kind of funding is," he says, "but I'm hoping there is some ongoing stream for this kind of investment in theaters."
Witnessing these little theaters go dark adds to his frustration about the homogenization of culture "through the fast-food franchises, the Home Depots, the Walmarts, where the mom-and-pop era has transitioned from local identity into just generic sprawl."
Regardless of where you grew up, he says, many people identify with the town's main street cinemas of their past.
"It's not going to church, but in some ways, it was a similar religious experience for us growing up — going to the theater every Friday or Saturday, it became a much-anticipated event," he says.
Cinemas became gathering places where, he says, everyone shared more than just a box of popcorn. They became a community engrossed in the same story, even if just for a few hours.
"Without a theater you lose that," Stein says. "Maybe you see your friends at the Walmart or Dollar Store, but it's not the same as seeing them every Friday or Saturday downtown at the movie show."
He recalls his childhood days attending one of the three local theaters in his hometown of Elmira, New York. One still operates as a performing arts center, displaying the sort of adaptable ingenuity that keeps some of these old cinemas alive.
Light for the Cavern
Gutierrez agrees and says some theater owners are transitioning their old movie theaters into spaces that can also host live events, such as concerts, plays, and parties.
"That's what we have been doing now ... working on improving [theater] stages with enhanced lightning and other amenities to help them serve a multipurpose use, not just showing film," he says.
That's the hope for revitalizing the downtown Carlsbad Cavern Theatre, says Kat Davis, director of Carlsbad MainStreet.
The group received $350,000 from the state's historic theater fund, and with the help of other state funding options, they've raised more than $1 million dollars to purchase and install a digital projection system and help renovate and update the structure's HVAC and fire suppression systems and bring it up to Americans With Disabilities Act standards. Then there was a new roof remodel and problems with asbestos and the list goes on.
"You expect 15 things, and there were more like 30 things," she says.
The city now owns the theater, which has been closed for decades, but Davis says she hopes the Cavern will reopen by the end of 2024 and draw families back downtown.
"Yes, we have a movie theater in our mall, but when you go to a historic theater, it's not just going to see a movie, it's the experience," she says. "A lot of people have memories there."
