In the heart of Yellow Springs, Ohio, lies the Little Art Theatre, a beloved arthouse cinema that has preserved its legacy for nearly a century. When the theatre sought funding for a new marquee, it turned to its native son, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Steve Bognar.In the heart of Yellow Springs, Ohio, lies the Little Art Theatre, a beloved arthouse cinema that has preserved its legacy for nearly a century. When the theatre sought funding for a new marquee, it turned to its native son, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Steve Bognar. Bognar’s profound connection to Little Art inspired a compelling video submission that captured the theatre’s essence as a community hub. He showcased the theatre’s rich history, from organizing film festivals to hosting local filmmakers, highlighting its vital role as a gathering place for shared experiences. In a society increasingly fragmented by remote learning, declining social engagement, and online consumption, Bognar recognized the theatre’s significance as a sanctuary for collective emotional resonance. “A movie theater is a kind of community center,” he declared. “It’s where we come together to experience something together.” Bognar’s video resonated deeply, earning Little Art the inaugural Theater of Dreams grant from streaming media company Plex. The grant will allow the theatre to replace its current marquee with the Art Deco design that adorned its facade in a bygone era. Bognar’s passion for the theatre is deeply rooted in his own childhood, where it ignited a fire within him to become a storyteller. “Some of my deepest, most beautiful storytelling experiences have happened here,” he said. “And that’s what I want to create for the audience.” The new marquee will not only serve as a physical reminder of the theatre’s past but also symbolizes its enduring spirit, an invitation to continue fostering community and inspiring the next generation of filmmakers in the years to come.
YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio (AP) — When the Little Art Theatre went looking for a $100,000 grant to help fund a stylish new marquee that nods to its century-old history, the cozy Ohio arthouse theater got some talented help.
Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Steve Bognar is a native of Yellow Springs, the bohemian college town between Columbus and Cincinnati where the theater is a fixture in the downtown area. In addition to being one of Little Art’s biggest fans, Bognar is an advocate for small, independent theaters around the world, which are struggling to survive in an industry now dominated by home streaming.
The eight-minute video that Bognar directed and filmed for the theater’s grant application was intended to illustrate what the loss of the theater can mean for people, communities and even society as a whole.
“The fact that this cinema is in the middle of the city, it’s like the heart of our town,” he said in a recent interview.
Bognar, who won an Oscar in 2020 with the late Julia Reichert for the documentary “American Factory,” began the video with about 100 different classic film titles flashing by on the Little Art Theatre’s current marquee. He then added interviews with locals, who reminisced about their favorite films and moviegoing experiences.
The documentary filmmaker realized that these kinds of shared experiences are becoming increasingly rare. Rising enrollments in home and private schools are fragmenting the school population, church attendance is declining, and everything from shopping to dining to dating is increasingly happening online.
“If there was one general theme that emerged, or kind of a guiding idea, it was that a movie theater, a small town movie theater, is a kind of community center,” Bognar said. “It’s where we come together to experience something together, like a piece of art or a community event or a local filmmaker showing their work.”
In its 95-year history, Little Art has organized the Dayton Jewish Film Festival, the 365 project for Juneteenth, and a Q&A session with Hiroshima survivors, among other events.
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Bognar’s video did its job. Little Art won the grant, the first Theater of Dreams award from streaming media company Plex. The company uses its grant program to honor other independent entertainment entities, since a poll the company conducted with OnePoll last summer found that two-thirds of respondents believed independent theater closures would be a great loss to society.
“That collective experience of sitting in the dark and just kind of feeling, going through a story and experiencing it together is beautiful,” Bognar said. “We don’t do that enough now. We’re so isolated these days. We’re staring at our screens individually. We’re watching movies individually. It’s sad.”
He believes that people share energy when they watch the same film together, which adds a sensory dimension to the experience.
“We feel more attuned because we’re surrounded by other people who are going through the same story,” he said. “And that’s what theater can do.”
The theater plans to use the grant to replace Little Art’s angular moderne marquee with the smoother Art Deco design that hung above the box office in an earlier era. The theater opened in 1929.
“We found an old photo of our marquee from the ’40s, early ’50s, and it all came together,” said Katherine Eckstrand, the theater’s director of development and community impact. “And we said, that’s it — it’s the marquee. We want to go back to our past to take us into our future. So that’s where it started.”
Bognar, 60, says it was this theatre that inspired him as a boy to become a filmmaker.
“Some of my deepest, most beautiful storytelling experiences in my entire life have happened here in this theater, being swept away by a great piece of film,” he said. “And that’s what I want to create for the audience, you know. It’s incredibly difficult to get to that level, but I love swimming toward that shore.”
