To adapt to the pandemic, many industries have had to change their business models in a COVID-friendly manner. For theatres, this included offering home rentals for movies and, for some, hosting drive-ins.
Nashville’s own Belcourt movie theatre used these innovative methods to stay afloat when health guidelines prevented movie screenings as usual. Now, as these restrictions are being lifted, the Belcourt has opened their doors to the public once again.
Since their reopening, the Belcourt has seen many Nashvillians return to see movies in person. In March, the Belcourt started showing Academy Award recognized films.
It didn’t seem to matter if they had already seen the films, people were ready to come back to the movies regardless.
Stephanie Silverman, the executive director of the Belcourt, said “We started slow. Both theaters [were] at 20% capacity,”
“Once the CDC came out with the new guidance, we now increased our capacity to 50%.”
As of now, there is still a mask policy in place, but Silverman said that the staff is monitoring data to find what makes people feel the safest about returning to the theater.
“It’s pretty clear that people feel most comfortable with a mask policy in place and some amount of distancing.”
However, since some may have gotten used to streaming at home, what is going to bring them back to the actual theater?
Silverman says, “The difference between the experience in a theatre and the experience in your house is just fundamentally different, from the sound to the image to the communal piece of it,”
She adds while laughing, “Your popcorn is probably not as good as ours.”
The communal piece seems to be the main difference between big corporate theaters and non-profit, independent theatres like the Belcourt.
For larger corporations it may have been more difficult to keep revenue coming in when no movies were showing; however, for a community-based theatre with strong neighborhood ties, there were more people wanting to help out.
“I think we’re gonna come out of it maybe a little faster than our commercial colleagues just because we’ve stayed in contact with our audiences the whole time, partially because they supported us,” said Silverman. “People kept renewing their memberships even though there was no benefit.”
Silverman says that eventually they will need to return to full-capacity screenings, but thanks to patron support they were able to keep most of their staff on during the pandemic.
“It’s balancing both patron safety, patron comfort and a financial viability of the organization.”
As far as the future of the Belcourt, Silverman is excited for the upcoming prospects for films: “What I suspect happened during a pandemic is that storytellers and creators wrote stories,”
“There’s gonna be some work that comes out of this weird pause that we had in our lives; that’s gonna be pretty spectacular I think.”
Already this summer, there are some new movies that the Belcourt is excited about. Visit their website to see their upcoming screenings.
Photo credit to Tom Gatlin