For many movie lovers, independent theaters are like houses of worship — the flicker of the screen bringing together strangers in a dark room to share in collective dreams of faraway places and people, different languages and fantastic stories. But in Kentucky, just two dedicated art house cinemas are still in operation following the recent closure of Louisville’s Baxter Avenue Theatres.
For Patrick Schmitt, a Louisville film devotee, life without Baxter seems a little less colorful.
Schmitt said the theater was the site of many “life-altering experiences” for him because of the types of films it played — incorporating foreign flicks, indie darlings and cult favorites alongside new, first-run blockbuster movies in their slate. From now on, Louisville cinephiles will have much slimmer pickings when it comes to what’s shown in their city.
“That's a sacred thing. And I don't always want to go to the megachurches where the Joel Osteen’s are like speaking to me or feeding me the same thing, regurgitating the same thing that everyone else is getting,” Schmitt said. “I want to go to the small chapel that I can always rely on. And, you know, it's a safe space.”
Local theaters struggle in post-pandemic age of streaming
The loss of Baxter isn’t unique. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there are nearly 6,000 fewer movie screens — collectively — across the U.S., many of them independent theaters that have struggled to survive after the shutdown in the midst of the streaming era.
The closure of the Louisville independent theater — which had served local audiences for nearly three decades — was a slightly more unexpected tragedy, though, brought about by a looming development deal set to change things up at the mall it occupies, not a lack of interest or diminishing box office returns.
Kennedy Cochran, a filmmaker and Louisville native, had been a regular at Baxter screenings since high school, when he started going to the theater’s raucous “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” showings. He called the closure tragic, saying the city has lost a “cultural cornerstone.”
“It isn't just losing a local theater to me and to really everybody that I know, because it was such a formative place for all of us,” he said. “Now that it’s gone, it feels like we lost someone in the family.”
Now, Schmitt said, he’ll have to keep an eye on what’s screening in other cities to keep up with independent film releases, checking calendars for places like Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre and Cincinnati’s Esquire and Mariemont film houses, in addition to what’s showing in Louisville and elsewhere in Kentucky.
“For as big a city as we are, we shouldn't have to travel all the way to another city to get a special experience,” he said.
Film lovers in Lexington and Paducah still have independent theaters to turn to in the Kentucky Theatre and Maiden Alley Cinema, but the leaders of both organizations say it’s harder than ever to keep the doors open.
The historic Kentucky Theatre is one of downtown Lexington’s signature sights, its marquee a fixture of Main Street for more than a century. But economic downturns in the industry and COVID saw the Kentucky switch to a nonprofit model during the pandemic. Due to changing interest levels and the streaming environment, executive director Hayward Wilkirson said they’ve had to change the way they promote their programming.
“You can sit at home and watch whatever you want to watch. Getting people out the door and into the theater often requires a lot of creativity that it didn't used to require, and it's tough,” he said. “It can be a lot of fun, but it's draining. … And we have to sort of pick and choose what we're doing.”
The two-screen setup in Lexington allows the theater to offer a robust mix of programming, spanning repertory screenings of classics and newer art house fare. But every film screened is selected by the staff.
“We think of ourselves as a curator, and we know that people trust our taste in film,” Wilkirson said.
In Paducah, Maiden Alley Cinema executive director Caroline Few said she often struggles with booking because she is limited to one screen — which can often lead to tricky negotiations with distributors who want their films to be played for multiple weeks exclusively on a screen.
“It makes it extremely difficult to schedule two movies at the same time or to decide, ‘Well, this movie is coming out first, so should I show it first, or do I wait until I can show it with another movie?’” Few said. “It's really complicated, but multiplexes don't have that problem, because they can have a single screen with one movie and have eight other screens with different movies.”
Like the Kentucky Theatre, MAC is a nonprofit organization also housed in a city-owned building, which allows them to program and act as a place for local artists and groups to come together while keeping overhead costs down.
Few said what makes indie theaters special isn’t just what’s shown on the screen. It’s the people in the seats.
“Independent theaters are first and foremost community venues, spaces for people to come and gather and watch and share in something together and, and that's just not something you're going to get from a streaming service at home,” she said.
Ky. greenlights millions in production incentives as theaters dwindle
As Kentucky’s number of dedicated independent theaters is reduced to just two, the state government is throwing more money than ever at the entertainment industry.
It hired a director for its new Kentucky Film Office earlier this month, following a revamping of its Kentucky Entertainment Incentive program designed to draw in film, television and theatrical productions from outside of the commonwealth so they spend money locally.
Both MAC and the Kentucky are havens for local filmmakers, regularly hosting premieres and screenings of works created by artists from and in the region.
In 2024, the Kentucky screened Ethan Hawke’s film “Wildcat,” which was shot in the Bluegrass State. It also welcomed Lexington native director Arkasha Stevenson home with a screening of her major motion picture debut “The First Omen” — a prequel to the 1970s horror classic starring Gregory Peck. On a smaller scale, MAC hosts offerings like the Cinema Systers, the only all-lesbian film festival in the U.S.; screenings of works by local filmmakers; and acts as a regional host of the international 48 Hour Film Project, in which teams of area filmmakers compete to make the best short film over the course of two days.
Multiplex theater chains, traditionally, don’t dabble in local film exhibition. And, now, with no dedicated theater in Louisville to host works by local artists, Cochran and Schmitt are both worried about what the film scene will have to do to have those communal experiences again.
For Schmitt, Baxter was “a place where dreams felt like they could be touched” for local filmmakers. He said the experience of seeing films made by local people was special.
“Seeing your friends’ or your name up on that screen, it just made you feel larger than life,” he said. “Losing access to a place where you can screen independent things or projects … it's detrimental. It's such a sadness.”
Cochran said independent theater spaces should be preserved as places “to broadcast our pride” as a state and a filmmaking community.
“Losing one of the few bastions that the locals had is just going to make it all the more difficult, like we have to probably plan screenings at like a bar or something now,” he said. “We need stuff like that in Kentucky, not even just in Louisville and Lexington, but all across the state, that supports that attention that they've been giving to the outside investors.”
Since 2022, nearly $274.5 million in Kentucky tax incentives have been approved for around 270 productions. Altogether, those projects total up to $794.5 million invested and supported nearly 27,000 jobs in the commonwealth.
Cochran, who’s worked in film production since before the state’s incentive was revived by the Kentucky Legislature, said he’s been happy to see more productions come to the area because it means steadier work for people like him. But he also wonders if the state could do something to support the few places left that can show those films that benefit from the incentive — or simply those made by Kentuckians.
“That generates great revenue for Kentucky, and that's an amazing plus by itself. But I wish there was more attention being given locally to screening locations, to small businesses that are trying to have theaters open up and things like that for the locals,” he said.
While the executive directors at MAC and the Kentucky both expressed reticence about what strings could be attached to state funding, they each said it would be a valuable lifeline.
“You've got to support the arts, and you sometimes need that help,” Wilkirson said. “We do okay, but we could grow. We could expand.”
Few said she doesn’t see a reason why the state shouldn’t lend some type of support to the few remaining art houses.
“If the local economy is willing to support filmmaking, for monetary purposes, to bring in jobs, why wouldn't they also support the theaters that can actually show the films where these films can actually be seen by local people who may have been involved in the film or who may have family members who worked on it, or who are in it?” she said.
As for the immediate future in Louisville, filmgoers there still have multiple major chain theaters as well as the Speed Art Museum – which regularly screens a curated selection of repertory movies and some first-run independent film through its Speed Cinema program.
But Cochran is confident that, someday, the indie theater void will be filled in Derby City.
“It's going to come back. It really is,” he said. “Art house theaters are coming back. It's just a matter of time.”
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky, and NPR.
