After Emelyn Stuart was told the building containing her movie theater in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for eight years was being turned into condominiums, she had to decide what to do.
Stuart had just spent $250,000 on a new auditorium at her Stuart Cinema and Café and had commitments to studios for movies, but no movie theater to show them. It was not the way she wanted this “movie” story to end, but it came very close to an unhappy ending until Stuart rewrote the story.
Emelyn StuartCourtesy of Stuart Cinema & Cafe
She recently walked through the solution, a new cinema in Long Island City she had built in about two months. She strolled through auditoriums with 45 and 50 seats, smiling and a survivor in a tough business.
The cinema has comfortable chairs (yes, more comfortable than her first cinema), a better café and shows blockbusters and smaller movies.
“It took me eight years to build the audience and the following. I had to move quickly. I found this space,” she said as she walked through the cinema, which opened in May. “I’m super happy. The old space was smaller. We didn’t have a kitchen. We always wanted to have a kitchen so I could offer more food.”
A screening at Stuart Cinema and CaféCourtesy of Stuart Cinema & Cafe
Businesses open all the time, but this new cinema is not an ordinary business, showing movies, dreams on the screen, and doing much more, providing a venue for everything from parties to festivals as well as blockbuster and smaller movies just blocks from the Museum of the Moving Image.
“We don’t really need to be on a main avenue, because we draw in foot traffic. They were willing to offer me a long-term lease and willing to work with me,” Stuart said of a landlord that gave her a launchpad to keep her dream alive. “I’m only 10 minutes from my old location. So I wouldn’t have to lose those customers.”
Stuart invested in new projectors, as well as $350 leather seats and soundproofing and, as she puts it, has a space as good and modern as any other movie theater.
“I have everything they have in the theater, but it’s smaller,” she said. “The studios had no issue giving me movies.”
She and her cinema do more than show big movies, presenting private events and private screenings and a path to at least consideration for big awards.
Stuart Cinema and CaféCourtesy of Stuart Cinema & Cafe
“We help filmmakers qualify for the Oscars,” Stuart said of smaller movies. “We do birthday parties, panels. A lot of people meet in our space. People can play their wedding anniversary video and have a whole night for themselves.”
Queens World Film Festival Executive Director Katha Cato sees the new cinema as boosting indie movies in the borough.
“The Stuart Cinema and Cafe is another giant leap forward for a thriving indie film community exploding in Queens,” Cato said. “Two additional screens in Queens make so much more possible for all of us working to bring these independent voices forward.”
Local movie makers see the new movie theater as a new way to reach audiences at a smaller venue.
“I was thrilled to screen at Stuart Cinema,” said Patricia Silva, whose award-winning movie “Bright Vignettes: How Astoria Got its Pride,” was screened there, near the core of the movie itself. “It’s an independent theater.”
Stuart worked in corporate America, at large law firms and brokerage houses, before she began producing film and television, facing problems with distribution.
“People were like, ‘You’d better build your own movie theater,” Stuart said. “That’s what I did. And here I am.”
While movie theater food typically means popcorn and soda, not being a huge fan of this fare, she opened a smaller café at her first cinema and a larger one here.
“I’m Dominican,” Stuart said before going over the menu in her film version of a field of dreams. “I’d love an empanada. What if we had a spicy latin burger? What if we had a Cajun chicken sandwich?”
She offers Coquito Spanish egg nogg, in keeping with her Dominican roots. “We sell it every day,” Stuart said. “Most people make it only for Christmas.”
Stuart said there is more space between rows and the “theater is bigger” as crowds arrive, often to see big movies, even as she works on projects as well in Brooklyn.
The new cinema has been doing well, opening with the new “The Devil Wears Prada” movie and Michael Jackson biopic “Michael.”
“They both did amazing,” she said of showings that attracted old and new fans, not just of the movies, but the movie theater.
The cinema, she said, is the only Afro Latina-owned movie theater in New York State in an industry that often remains male-dominated.
“It’s a very closed, old boy, old school network,” Stuart said. “A lot of people pass their theaters down generation after generation.”
They just finished showing “Scary Movie” and “Toy Story Five,” helping drive business. “Movies are doing better here than at my other theater,” Stuart said before pausing. “It could also be that we have better movies now. We’ve got movies that people are excited about.”
She also shows smaller movies and thinks out of the box (office) when it comes to menu, providing popcorn with a twist, such as chocolate whiskey flavor.
“We have something nobody else has,” Stuart said. “We have liquor-infused popcorn. People don’t have to drink alcohol. They could also eat the popcorn.”
The crowd at Stuart Cinema and Café.Courtesy of Stuart Cinema & Cafe
We talk as Stuart walks through her cinema where others get to see, if not her dreams, movies she shows, and share in her dream.
“We’re about to start ‘Toy Story,’” Stuart says, although every day is another page in her own story as well. “A staff person comes in and programs all the movies and then we’re good to go and they just play.”
She is running a movie theater, half Hollywood and half home, with pillows on a bench that make you feel like you are in a place built and furnished with love.
“These days, my favorite movie is ‘The Greatest Showman,’” Stuart says of a movie that, in some ways, echoes her story. “It’s really about the underdog and it’s a musical with dancing.”
They have a stage (although no backstage) in both auditoriums where they presented a puppet show, burlesque show for Pride month, comedians, spoken word and showed the FIFA World Cup United States versus Bosnia.
They also offer special discounts ($8 movies on Wednesday) as a dream that nearly turned into a disaster, like a phoenix, grew wings and turned into a sequel in an industry where that sometimes happens.
“The audience is out there,” Stuart said with a smile that just months ago might have been difficult to imagine. “We consider ourselves a gathering space. It’s not just about the movies.”