How a Small Town Saved Its Movie Theater

When the owners of the Orpheum announced they would close the single-screen theater after eighty-six years, the town of Millbrook did something unusual: it bought it. More than six hundred residents pooled money to form a nonprofit that now runs the theater, sells the popcorn, and chooses the films.

The programming is eclectic: new releases on weekends, classics on Tuesdays, a children's matinee every Saturday morning. Volunteers staff the concession stand. The projectionist is a nineteen-year-old who learned the job from the previous projectionist, who is eighty.

Attendance is up. More importantly, people say, the marquee is lit again on Main Street, and that turns out to matter more than anyone expected.