After loss of beloved theaters, fans of indie films have fewer metro Detroit options

What is the state of independent movie theaters in the Detroit region? It’s a question that reminds film lovers that they are still in mourning over the loss of two longtime locations and the switch of another to a pop-up format.

The dearly departed are the venerable Main Art Theater in Royal Oak, which was demolished in 2022 despite a valiant grassroots effort to save it, and the Maple Theater in Bloomfield Township, which shut its doors for good in 2024, the same day that its closing was announced online.

The site that is still a pop-up but without a brick-and-mortar home is Cinema Detroit in Detroit's Midtown area. It left its rented space in 2023.

Across the country, independent movie theaters (also known as indie cinemas and art houses) are facing challenges that reflect the struggles of the movie industry at large as well as some intense problems that are unique to their niche.

Indie cinemas are loosely defined as places that offer a carefully selected calendar of independent, foreign, classic, documentary and other films that are outside the mainstream. They are akin to a tiny neighborhood coffeehouse with an eclectic menu, whereas the mainstream multiplexes that screen action blockbusters and superhero franchises are like super-sized Starbucks shops.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 didn’t just temporarily put movie theaters into lockdown. It cast a sharp focus on the various struggles of indie cinemas, which mostly are nonprofit (and have slim profit margins when they’re not). Competition from streaming sites, rising costs and decreased donations have all been issues. The situation was exacerbated in 2023 by the actors and writers strikes in Hollywood, which led to delays in production and fewer new releases for 2024.

While multiplexes continue to bounce back thanks to releases like the Marvel superhero-charged “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which so far has earned $1.1 billion globally, and the family-friendly sequel “Inside Out 2,” which has topped $1.6 billion, art houses have had a harder time regaining their footing.

The bread-and-butter demographic for indie cinemas before the pandemic was people 60 and older, and and only about 60% of them have made the return to their local theaters, according to Kate Markham, managing director of Art House Convergence, a national coalition of independent exhibitors that started in 2006 with a gathering hosted by the Sundance Institute. It officially became Art House Convergence (run by the Michigan Theater Foundation in Ann Arbor) in 2008 and now is an independent organization.

Despite what has been several rough years for indie cinemas, a 2024 national audience survey by the group turned up some encouraging findings. A survey of more than 32,000 people from ages 15 to 98 showed that audiences deeply value indie cinemas. New and young customers are discovering the theaters, it found, and there also has been an increase in the percentage of films that those surveyed watched at art houses as opposed to multiplexes and streaming (20% versus 16% in 2019).

According to the survey, the overall audience age is 50 (down from 55 in 2019) and the average age of new attendees is 38.

Indie cinemas forge the sort of loyalty among patrons that isn't found among people catching the latest summer extravaganza on the big screen or scrolling through hundreds of titles on Netflix. Says Markham, “We have very passionate folks in our industry who are curating that program for you. They’re there and they’re saying, ‘This film is worthwhile and we want you to come see it.’ It’s almost like a concierge service.”

The Main, the Maple and Cinema Detroit were beloved by their audiences. But with such love must come steady financial support. Says Markham: "People get this false sense of security, like, ‘Oh, it’s fine, they’re always going to be there.’ That is not true. They need you to keep coming to the cinemas. They need you to keep donating (and keep going), because we’re not permanent.”

Hard times for the Main Art and Maple theaters and Cinema Detroit

The now-demolished Main Art Theater opened in 1941 in downtown Royal Oak and showed mainstream fare before switching to indie and art films in 1983. The Landmark Theatres chain, which ran the site starting in 1997, closed it in 2021 in the midst of the pandemic and returned the property to A.F. Jonna Management & Development. A passionate community group called Friends of the Main Art Theater brought together almost 200 supporters for an April 2022 rally to save the Main, but the Royal Oak City Commission approved plans to demolish the theater.

The nonprofit Cinema Detroit, launched in 2013 by co-founder and programmer Paula Guthat, had to leave its rental space (its second site since opening) in the city's Midtown neighborhood in June 2023. Guthat, who was losing money in the pandemic’s aftermath, was facing rising rent costs and increased efforts to sell the building. Although she hoped to find another permanent home as soon as possible, the search is now on hold.

“We looked for a space that is close to ready to use because we don’t have a lot of budget to come in and do a build-out,” she says.

Beginning next month, Cinema Detroit will present a series of screenings on Sundays at Planet Ant, the Hamtramck theater known for its live shows and improv comedy. The Sept. 15 debut film is “Join or Die,” a documentary inspired by social scientist and "Bowling Alone" author Robert Putnam’s extensive research on the link between the decline of community groups and today's divided America. "It's a fascinating look at how we got here and what we might be able to do it reverse it," says Guthat.

While Cinema Detroit accomplished much in 10 years as a unique hub offering all sorts of films, including content for and by women, people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, Guthat struggled to find the major patrons and, sometimes, the grant money that could have sustained the theater.

“I just figured, 'Why not Detroit?'” she says of launching her dream of running an indie cinema. “Well, It turns out that there certainly is a strong core of folks who want to see films on a big screen, but not enough to support a seven-day-a-week art house.”

As for key Detroit benefactors like the Knight Foundation and the Kresge Foundation, she says, “Though we often provided a place for local filmmakers to premiere their work and I still get requests from filmmakers to show their work, those two seem to have more interested in supporting filmmaking and supporting large institutions. There's not that much support for any film exhibition outside that."

In the case of the Maple Theater, the arrival of the pandemic changed everything, according to Jon Goldstein, who owned and operated the for-profit theater with his wife, Lauren, for 12 years.

“It always was more of a labor of love for my wife and I than an actual profitable, profit-seeking venture,” says Goldstein. When the pandemic shutdowns were lifted, the drop in audience size was significant. “We went from 120,000 visits a year to 65,000, so we almost lost half of our attendance because of COVID,” he says. "Months of difficult deliberations” were involved in the decision to shutter the Maple, he said in announcing its closing.

Goldstein says the decrease in the number of movies available to indie cinemas wasn’t just driven the pandemic or the 2023 strikes in Hollywood. He blames the studios for jumping so wholeheartedly on the streaming bandwagon.

“The studios really got to the point where they didn’t want to have middlemen anymore, and a theater is a middle person. We make money on their product, even though they make the majority of it. ... They treated us like dirt.”

Now that the streaming model is having its own financial turmoil, studios are reviving their commitment to theatrical releases, says Goldstein, who owns and operates 11 Emagine theaters consisting of the Riviera Cinema in Farmington Hills, the Emagine Woodhaven and nine Emagine locations in the Minneapolis area. But that doesn’t erase the fact that “they literally went on a 10-year venture chasing a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that didn’t exist.”

Cinema Lamont, Senate Theater, others soldier on

Despite the shifts in the art house landscape, Detroit still has much to be grateful for in its indie screening scene. Most prominently, there is the staying power of the Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts, which has been led for 50 years by Elliot Wilhelm, who reigns as both the DFT curator and the unofficial dean of Detroit’s film community. The DFT is described by the DIA as “one of the most comprehensive and acclaimed showcases of contemporary and classic world cinema in the United States.”

Wilhelm’s continuing devotion to the DFT's weekend roster of films from around the world is admired by another of Motor City’s movie strengths: its tight-knit and small community of people devoted to screening art house fare wherever and whenever they can.

Among them is Josh Gardner of the nonprofit Cinema Lamont, which does pop-up events with numerous organizations around the city. On Friday, Cinema Lamont was set to wrap up the annual puppet film series it does with the Detroit Puppet Company. It also is presenting “The Deciders” on Aug. 27 at Hamtramck’s Oloman Café & Gallery. The documentary is described as what happens when “a group of self-professed ‘Patriotic Millionaires’ descends upon a tiny, Southern town” to convince residents on the left and the right to help with a movement to “tax the rich, raise the minimum wage and save American democracy.”

Cinema Lamont also holds monthly screenings of modern cult classics at the Foundation Hotel’s private dining room and did a weekly brunch screening with the Fourth Wall, a film-focused wine bar that closed after a fire early this year.

“There’s a really nice film community in Detroit, that’s one of the things I love — people who are pop-ups, people with brick-and-mortars, and we’re all kind of supporting each other and partnering with each other. We reach different audiences, so I think it’s nice for us to work together to spread the reach,” says Gardner.

As devastating as the losses of three brick-and-mortar spaces have been, Gardner says, “the thing about Detroit and Detroiters is we’re super resourceful, and so the community has responded in some ways.”

As an example, he cites the Motor City Cinema Society, which screens classic and harder-to-find 16 mm movies in the Redford Theatre annex, a storefront screening room next to another Detroit site for retro films, the Redford Theatre. Its fall schedule includes gems like 1980’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and 1981’s “The Evil Dead” (the breakout shoestring budget horror film by metro Detroiter Sam Raimi that had its premiere at the Redford.)

Gardner hopes there will be more places permanently dedicated to indie films in Detroit. For now, community efforts will help fill the calendar.

“It can be challenging and a lot of the places we’re popping up, we’re lugging equipment and spending long hours setting it up," he says. "But we’re doing it because we love film and we love the community and we want to see things happen. So I know we’re all doing it to the best of our abilities while trying to make it make sense.”

Nick Baldwin, who is in charge of the movie selection committee for the Senate Theater, one of the few remaining Detroit movie houses from the 1920s, agrees that the community’s close, collaborative nature is important. ”On the one hand, it’s a great thing," he says. "On the other, we need more of it.”

The Senate's fall schedule is doing its part to introduce new generations to retro favorites like 1979’s “Rock ’n’ Roll High School,” which is scheduled for Sept. 7, and the 1925 silent classic “The Phantom of the Opera” starring Lon Chaney on Oct. 12. Baldwin is one of many who are helping historic theaters like the Senate survive by providing free sweat equity.

”I don’t know anyone actually in our scene who does this full-time. Everyone is volunteering their time,” says Baldwin, who has been involved with programming at the Senate since 2017

There also are a handful of indie theaters in the suburbs that are dear to the hearts of their cities, including the Penn in Plymouth, the Farmington Civic in Farmington, the Historic Howell Theater in Howell and the Milford Independent Cinema in Milford. Just this February, an emergency drive to collect $10,000 for the Milford Independent Cinema doubled that goal in a mere 10 days.

Ann Arbor’s towering figure in indie cinema, Russ Collins, is retiring in December from his role as executive director of the nonprofit Marquee Arts (formerly the Michigan Theater Foundation, which runs both the Michigan and the nearby State Theater). He has led the Michigan Theater since 1982, turning it into an award-winning cultural landmark of the city surrounding the University of Michigan. Collins also was the founder of Art House Convergence and launched the Cinetopia film fest in 2012.

After a lifetime in indie cinema, Collins admits that the challenges to running an independent movie theater and sustaining it through thick and thin are huge.

“There’s basically not very much money for arts from the government, whether it’s state, local or regional. So it really is up to individuals who are passionate about cinema and who understand (what’s needed to create) an organization that will consistently raise funds and has the capability to raise funds to support the venue and support the programming,”

For now, some indie films that might have been offered exclusively in the past to the Main or the Maple are being absorbed into multiplexes. The Birmingham 8 Powered by Emagine location is “an ideal theater for art house content,” says Anthony LaVerde, CEO of Emagine Entertainment. Goldstein, meanwhile, says he plans to bring back the popular Maple Theater mystery movie event, Secret Cinema, to Birmingham's Emagine Palladium in September.

Seven weeks ago, another potential labor of love — this one involving a historic former metro Detroit theater on 12 Mile Road with a majestic vintage marquee — began to take root with the creation of the Berkley Theater Revival page on Facebook. The page is aimed at people interested in reviving the city of Berkley's former downtown movie theater, which was in business for more than 50 years before closing in the1990s. The Art Deco structure has been the longtime home of a Rite Aid drugstore.

With the Rite Aid chain departing soon from Michigan, the page's vision of restoring the space has attracted 412 members and sparked an ongoing spirited discussion with comments like: "It would be great if we could have something similar to the Redford theater."

Such dreams are what movies — and indie movie theaters — are made of.

Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Indie films harder to find in Detroit after loss of beloved theaters