Page 7 - BusinessWest March 17, 2025

“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.”
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.
“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 dra- matically since the pandemic began. Specifically, there’s more content (including the small, indepen- dent 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 stream- ers 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 sup- porters,” 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,
Yasmin Chin Eisenhauer says Amherst Cinema is important to the town not only culturally and socially, but economically as well.
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