Screen Time
Executive Director
Yasmin Chin Eisenhauer
As Yasmin Chin Eisenhauer gave BusinessWest a tour of Amherst Cinema, some of the contrasts were striking.
Like the original, century-old exposed brickwork in the upper-level projection room juxtaposed with three high-tech projectors, upgraded just last year, and the brand-new screens in the theater rooms below.
“Once you have a projector that is so precise with color and picture, then suddenly your screens that are 20 years old start looking very dated,” said Eisenhauer, now in her fifth year as executive director of the downtown landmark.
And landmark is the right word; this is a building with plenty of history within its walls, and impact beyond them.
The original building dates back to 1879, when a livery was erected on the site of the former Amherst Academy. After a major downtown fire in 1926, the structure was sold, renovated, and operated as a single-screen cinema until 1999, when it closed after years of neglect and deterioration.
Soon after, a group of arts lovers decided to save the historic structure from the auction block, raising nearly $3 million to build the new, nonprofit Amherst Cinema, which reopened in 2006 as a state-of-the-art, three-screen cinema. In 2013, a fourth screen was opened at the intimate Studio Theater, located steps away from the main cinema building.
That’s a lot of evolution, but what hasn’t changed — especially over the past two decades — is Amherst Cinema’s impact on the arts and cultural landscape of this region.
“We’re a catalyst for community. We are a place that feels very reflective of the greater community of moviegoers,” Eisenhauer said as she settled down in one of the empty theaters for an in-depth talk about the facility’s history, offerings, and future.
“When you think about what the greater community needs at this time, it’s an opportunity to come in, share the film experience, clap and laugh and applaud and cry and process and grieve.”
“We have 5,500 members, and our members and supporters were essential in terms of getting us through the pandemic. If you look around, all of these seats in our theaters are named,” she continued, pointing out patrons’ names engraved on tiny plates on the front of each seat. “People in the community have very deep investments in this place that they see as a cinema, but really their cinema. And they want to see it survive and thrive.”
The program of offerings on any given day appeals to a wide demographic, she added, from kids to college students to older lovers of film history.
“We have our Exhibition on Screen, which is our art-history films. We also have National Theatre Live, which are filmed recordings of performances from London’s West End. But then we have The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We have many, many filmmakers who come on stage through our Bellwether: New Voices in Film Series, as well as first-run and specialty films.”
The renovated, three-screen Amherst Cinema was reopened in 2006.
Recently, as part of a James Earl Jones retrospective, Amherst Cinema began screening all three original Star Wars movies.
“When A New Hope was here, we had a sold-out house of Star Wars fans who had seen it originally, but also a new generation being able to watch that on a large screen for the first time; that was really, really fun,” she said.
“And when you think about what the greater community needs at this time, it’s an opportunity to come in, share the film experience, clap and laugh and applaud and cry and process and grieve. We do all of that across our screens. That’s why we’re a catalyst for community: we’re here for the community, serving up programs and experiences that are meaningful and memorable.”
From Darkness to Light
Eisenhauer’s first day on the job after accepting the executive director’s role at Amherst Cinema was Jan. 6, 2021 — a meaningful day in the U.S., for sure, but a very quiet one at the movies.
“Our screens were dark, closed to the public,” she said of those early days, almost 10 months after COVID shuttered public gatherings. “We were doing streaming films, but it was very, very clunky. We are not, nor do we aspire to be, a streamer, but it was a group of arthouse theaters who launched a venture to be able to showcase independent films. At the time, we were also doing private theater rentals, one group at a time. People were paying $300 for a theater experience.
“That’s where we were when I came in. Our front-of-house team had been furloughed. Our managers and board were totally burnt out because the pandemic really upended theaters and theatrical exhibitions,” she recalled.
“After a screening, we might have the filmmaker on stage, or a faculty member from one of our institutions who has a deep expertise on a certain subject or topic of the film, and the discussions that happen in this room are incredible.”
“So one of the first things that I did when I came on board was to try and experiment: let’s do away with private theater rentals because they’re really expensive. It’s a pandemic, when many people in our community are suffering in all kinds of ways. So let’s take the model, but we’ll rename it small-group screenings, and we’ll charge regular ticket prices and include our member discounts. It’s still no more than 10 at a time, but we got to open up all of our screens.”
Those shows sold out — fast. “Everybody started coming back. It was amazing. It reminded you of why these places were here. Everybody was confined to their home. Now they could come back, get up and close and personal with stories, and just be moved,” Eisenhauer said.
Participating in a Q&A after a screening of The Longest Goodbye are, from left, Amherst Cinema’s George Myers; Jamey Simpson and his mother, astronaut Cady Coleman; and director Ido Mizrahy with his son.
Photo courtesy of Amherst Cinema
“There was a woman who was undergoing chemotherapy, and her children said, ‘you may not leave the house.’ And she said, ‘I left it to come here to see a movie because I really, really needed to see a movie.’ And she was just moved to tears to be able to return and feel alive. We have a lot of very transformative moments like that, where people understand the value of the movies as an art, as essential.”
Since then, ticket sales have crept back up, but they’re still about 20% below pre-pandemic levels, and Eisenhauer said that’s a difficult gap to close because moviegoers’ habits have changed dramatically since the pandemic began. Specifically, there’s more content (including the small, independent firms Amherst Cinema is known for) at home.
“That gap that the streamers filled is a reality for theaters nationwide. Pre-pandemic, we had a steady supply of arthouse films. We had more films than screens, and it was vibrant in terms of the landscape and the film supply. Post-pandemic, we struggled with two things. One is that streamers had fundamentally changed moviegoing habits. Second is the film supply that was available to us. But in those four years, we’ve steadily recovered.
“The advantage of Amherst Cinema as a local nonprofit is the community of members and supporters,” she added. “We survived the pandemic. I mean, that is not a small feat. There are a lot of cinemas that didn’t survive.”
To continue the momentum, as noted earlier, the facility recently invested in its projector technology, sound, and screens, as well as replacing all its seats during the pandemic. “So when you’re here, you’ve got a really modern and fully immersive experience.”
But the top factor in bringing people in is simply curating movies that people want to see and can’t get elsewhere, whether it’s first-run independent and arthouse films (for example, several of this year’s Oscar nominees, including all the nominated documentary, animated, and live-action shorts), the $5 family film program (E.T., The Lion King, and a Mary Poppins sing-along are all on the docket this spring) or Friday-night cult favorites (the next few selections are Conan the Barbarian, Sleepaway Camp, and The Doom Generation).
“Then we curate all these retrospectives and repertory cinema, and we eventize them,” Eisenhauer explained. After a screening, we might have the filmmaker on stage, or a faculty member from one of our institutions who has a deep expertise on a certain subject or topic of the film, and the discussions that happen in this room are incredible.
“Janet Planet was a big one because that was a local filmmaker, Annie Baker, and what was really fun about that was seeing Western Massachusetts on the screen. People would sit through all the credits because so many of the folks who participated in the making of that are from the local community.”
Yasmin Chin Eisenhauer says Amherst Cinema is important to the town not only culturally and socially, but economically as well.
Another program that pairs a movie with a discussion is called Science on Screen. Upcoming features include The Silence of the Lambs, which includes a lecture by Erik Charles, a UMass Amherst professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences; Don’t Look Up, with Ethan Zuckerman, a UMass Amherst professor of Public Policy, Information, and Communication; and The Pod Generation, with Carrie Baker, a Smith College professor of the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Hearts, Minds, and Economics
While advocating for Amherst Cinema as an important cultural institution, Eisenhauer was quick to note its place as an economic multiplier in the community.
“We employ locally; it’s a small team, but they’re all from here. We also prioritize local vendors, from our IT providers to our printers to many products here. We look for hyper-local vendors — Dean’s Beans is our coffee supplier. We do as much as we can locally.”
When people come to the movies from out of town, she added, they often dine in Amherst and even stay in hotels, if the movie outing is part of a broader vacation. “So when the cinema is up and running, it drives a lot of traffic to the town and really amplifies businesses.”
The local element is a critical one to many such arthouses, she added. “We are not a corporate chain that is doing something from the middle of the country that gets spread all over. The labor is here, and that’s our priority.”
Thinking back to the early days of her leadership, with the pandemic in full swing, and how Amherst Cinema has recovered and continues to rebound, Eisenhauer noted her love of post-apocalyptic movies and books.
“Many of them are, of course, naturally very grim and frightening, but many of them are about discovering humanity — what remains when everything is lost? And one of the things that I’ve noticed in post-apocalyptic films is that, at the end, what survives is art and the arts,” she said.
“I’ve always loved movies. We’re fundamentally telling stories that are relevant and important to the human experience, particularly at a time when we feel like many things are being lost, including from the pandemic and being afraid to come out, or getting out of the habit of coming out,” she went on. “And then, when people return, they get this experience, and they’re moved. So when I think about why we’re here and what we do, it’s kind of changing hearts and minds, one film at a time.”
