In a small riverside park in Greenpoint, there is a mural of a girl lying on a blanket, pulling petals from a handful of daisies. The mural is maybe twenty feet high and covers the entire north-facing wall of the park’s large brick building. I have to walk to the other side of the rounded lawn to get a good look at it, but when I do, I am struck by how pensive the girl in the mural looks as she studies the daisies in her hand. Her face is turned away from me, so I only see her profile, but it seems to me that she asks a question of the daisies. She’s thinking bigger than petals. Her mind is beyond the brick. While I stand across the lawn and study the line of her profile, a man walks his dog past me and a couple shares a sandwich on a bench. The girl in the mural lies on painted grass, plucking petals from a handful of daisies, at the place where art and industry meet.
As I turn from the girl with the daisies and walk out of WNYC Transmitter Park, I find that the walls of the warehouse on my right are also covered in murals. In one of them, a team of ice cream monsters lounge on a grey wall. A few blocks over, a black and white robot made of boombox parts stands near a pink rocket ship taking flight. There are stencils of faces and images of superheroes. Here, art is everywhere.
At the next corner, I turn and walk past a couple of warehouses and a bike shop before stopping at a beautiful, wall-sized woman painted in brown, orange, and yellow. To her right are rows of glass windows and doors, and behind those rows is the Stuart Cinema & Cafe.
Carl, an enthusiastic man from Rochester, greets me with a grin at the door and waves me into a small room with a few tables on my right, and a counter serving coffee and snacks on my left. He offers me a seat at one of the tables. There, I wait for Emelyn, the warm, energetic owner, to give me the tour.
The theater is small. One room, a stage, removable chairs, surround sound, and a 160-inch projector screen mounted at the far end of the theater. The space itself is simple, but the ideas behind it are much grander. Considering Stuart Cinema & Cafe opened less than two months ago, the team is off to a great start. Shortly after opening, they hosted Validate Yourself, a film festival dedicated to providing an accessible space for aspiring filmmakers to show their work. And last week I attended Stuart’s own Ocktober Film Festival, which the duo has organized and run annually since its conception in 2013.
The Ocktober Film Festival is a four-day event that screens a variety of projects from both established and emerging filmmakers. On top of showing shorts, documentaries, and feature films, they also hold panels, meet and greets, and creative workshops for those looking to learn a little about the industry. I attended the first night of short films and was struck by both their quality and diversity of topic and style. The pieces were original, timely, and commented on topics ranging from suicide to race to communication.
The space will start with mainstream titles, but Emelyn says the theater’s goal is to be more than just a place to show movies.
“We want to be a space for filmmakers to come show their work while maintaining ownership of their films and actually making money.” Emelyn is emphatic on this last point. An accomplished businessperson and experienced film producer, she knows to keep that bottom line in mind. “We know filmmakers who’ve mortgaged their houses to pay for projects, and when they finally get to show their work, they have to pay the cinemas outrageous amounts of money, and never even turn a profit. They take years to make the film, pay to make the film, pay to show the film, and then what?”
Most cinemas who show independent films either charge large sums to let the filmmakers screen their work, or show it with no fee, but take all of the profit from ticket sales. Creators rarely get anything but the pleasure of having an audience. Stuart Cinema & Cafe aims to operate differently: They charge $350 for a two-hour rental of the seventy-seat theater, which is open to the public, and let the filmmakers sell the tickets themselves, which allows them to get 100% of the box office revenue.
Emelyn is excited about what the future holds for their little cinema: “This will be a home for filmmakers, artists, musicians, and writers. We’re surrounded by studios and the artistic community does need a space where they can share their work and see what the rest of the community has to offer.”
In addition to showing movies and hosting independent film festivals, Stuart Cinema & Cafe will be holding filmmaking and writing workshops, art shows, live music, spoken word and poetry events, standup comedy, and whatever the New York art scene can throw at them.
Emelyn and Carl understand the difficulties of making it in the film industry, or in any artistic community, but this doesn’t discourage them.
“At the end of the day,” she says, “we know it’s hard, and we want to help.”
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For contact info and information on showcasing your work at Stuart Cinema & Cafe, click here.