As theaters struggle, many independent cinemas in Los Angeles are finding their audience

LOS ANGELES (AP) — On a hot summer evening, Miles Villalon lined up outside the New Beverly Cinema, hours before showtime.

The 36-year-old already had tickets to the Watergate-themed double feature of 1976's “All the President’s Men” and 1999's “Dick.” But Villalon braved Los Angeles' infamous rush-hour traffic to snag front-row seats at Quentin Tarantino's historic theater.

This level of dedication is routine for the Starbucks barista and aspiring filmmaker, who typically sees up to six movies a week in theaters, and almost exclusively in independently owned theaters in and around Los Angeles.

“I always say it feels like church,” he said. “When I go to AMC, I just sit there. And I can’t really experience that communal thing that we have here, where we’re all just worshipping at the altar of celluloid.”

Streaming — and a pandemic — have radically transformed cinema consumption, but Villalon is part of a growing number of mostly younger people contributing to a renaissance of LA’s independent theater scene. The city’s enduring, if diminished, role as a mecca of the film industry still shapes its residents and their entertainment preferences, often with renewed appreciation after the pandemic.

Part of what makes the city unique is its abundance of historic theaters, salvaged amid looming closures or resurrected in recent years by those with ties to the film industry. Experts see a pattern of success for a certain kind of theater experience in Los Angeles.

Kate Markham, the managing director at Art House Convergence, a coalition of independent cinema exhibitors, said a key factor is the people who run these theaters.

“They know their audiences or their potential audiences, and they are curating programs and an environment for them to have an exceptional experience,” she wrote in an email.

Tarantino pioneered the trend when he purchased the New Beverly in 2007. After Netflix bought and restored the nearby Egyptian Theater, which first opened in 1922 as a silent movie house, the company reopened it to the public in November in partnership with the nonprofit American Cinematheque. It's now a bustling hub, regularly welcoming A-list celebrities premiering their projects as well as film buffs willing to stick around for hourslong marathons, like a recent screening of four Paul Thomas Anderson movies.

Further east is Vidiots. Previously existing as a Santa Monica video store before it closed in 2017, Vidiots reopened across town five years later with the addition of a 271-seat theater, bar and new crop of devotees.

“It’s literally my favorite place to be outside of my own snuggly home,” said filmmaker and actor Mark Duplass, a financial backer of Vidiots alongside dozens of other high-profile names, including Aubrey Plaza and Lily Collins.

What draws people to independent theaters can vary, from older programming to elevated food-and-drink offerings to lower prices. But many agree, above all, there is a communal aspect chains can’t match.

“The bigger places obviously have premium formats and stuff like that. But I think there’s a lot less communal connection” said Dr. Michael Hook, who attended a matinee of “Seven Samurai” at Vidiots with a Children’s Hospital Los Angeles co-worker. “You’re not just milling around with people who also have selected to go to a three-hour-long 1950s Japanese movie.”

Although the pandemic was a blow from which the box office has yet to recover, it also served as a pruning that made the movie theater landscape more sustainable for the streaming era, according to Janice O’Bryan, Comscore’s senior vice president.

“COVID weeded out some of the stuff that needed to close anyway,” O’Bryan said of the more than 500 theaters that closed nationwide. “I think that it made everything healthier.”

The theaters that survived have found niches, sometimes purposefully eschewing the chains' 4DX, reclining seats and dining services.

“For the types of films that we show, I definitely don’t want waiters walking around, bringing stuff to people and hearing the scraping of cutlery on plates,” laughed Greg Laemmle, who co-runs the Laemmle Theaters, a fixture of independent cinema in Los Angeles for nearly a century.

But Laemmle acknowledges the importance of giving audiences options beyond popcorn and soda, especially as an additional revenue source. Embracing food and drinks can sometimes turn the theater into a unique destination.

“When I normally go to a movie theater, I show up two minutes before the movie starts,” Duplass said. “I go to Vidiots like 45 minutes before the movie starts so I can get my chilled Junior Mints, I can have a drink at the bar, see some people. I go and walk around the video store.”

In February, more than 30 filmmakers — including Jason Reitman, Steven Spielberg, Denis Villeneuve and Christopher Nolan — acquired Westwood’s Village Theater in an effort to preserve it. Also coming to the red-carpet premiere favorite? A restaurant, bar and gallery.

Like the rest of the country, LA movie theaters have had their share of pandemic-inflicted challenges — some exacerbated by last summer's strikes — including fewer movies to show.

And not all theaters have found their Tarantino or Reitman. The iconic Cinerama Dome’s closure was a blow to the city's cinephiles. Though owned and operated by the ArcLight Cinemas chain when it closed in April 2021, the Dome was a kind of singularity in Hollywood, a regular premiere spot memorialized in film and a symbol of the city's place in the industry.

Its fate remains in limbo, with reported delays to the targeting reopening date, despite parent company Decurion Corporation, who couldn’t be reached for comment, being granted a liquor license for the multiplex in July 2022.

The venues that have been preserved often have done so through some form of benefaction or aid, like the $16 billion federal Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, which Laemmle used during the pandemic. He said the funds were a needed bandage in June 2021. But a full recovery has been slow.

“It provided some stability. How much remains to be seen,” he said. “The waters are still muddy.”

In some ways, thanks to the city’s history, culture and surfeit of theaters, this renaissance is most apparent in Los Angeles, admits Bryan Braunlich, the executive director of the National Association of Theatre Owners Cinema Foundation.

Tarantino, who declined to be interviewed, is less likely to purchase a dying revival house in Peoria, Illinois. But, Braunlich argued, that doesn’t mean this trend can’t have an impact there.

“Hollywood and filmmakers are saying, ‘Hey, movie theaters matter,’” he said. “There are amazing independent theater owners that are thriving across the country. And I think they get a boost of confidence of like, ‘Yes, this is a great business to be in. This is a great business to invest in. And we’re not alone as film nerds doing this.’"

As Duplass reflected on his own introduction to cinema growing up in the suburbs of New Orleans, he recalled a trip to Vidiots to see “Raising Arizona” with his parents.

“I realized that I was the same age now that they were then when we first saw it in the movie theater together. And I got to hold my dad’s hand as we cried in that last scene,” he said. “We shared that movie, but we shared the passing of time in our favorite church, which is the movie theater.”

FILE - The dome of the Cinerama theatre is covered by green plastic in the form of animated character Shrek to promote the film "Shrek 2" in Los Angeles on May 19, 2004. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)

A marquee at the Eagle Theatre at Vidiots Foundation advertises screenings of "Jaws" and "Last Dragon," Tuesday, June 27, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Cinephile Miles Villalon, left, stands underneath the marquee of the New Beverly Cinema revival theater, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

FILE - People appear outside the Cinerama Dome movie theater, Monday, April 12, 2021, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

A list of concessions is pictured in the lobby of the Eagle Theatre at Vidiots Foundation, Tuesday, June 27, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Pedestrians gather under the marquee of the Vista Theatre, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Mark Duplass, a cast member in "Biosphere," poses at the premiere of the film, Tuesday, June 27, 2023, at Vidiots Foundation in Los Angeles. Duplass is a founding member of Vidiots Foundation, which features a combined video store and movie theatre. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

The Vista Theatre is pictured, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, in the Los Feliz section Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

The audience awaits the premiere screening of the film "Biosphere," Tuesday, June 27, 2023, at the Eagle Theatre at Vidiots Foundation in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Cinephile Miles Villalon poses near the marquee of the New Beverly Cinema revival theater, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Lahai Makieu struck the bamboo with a machete until it cracked and fell. Balancing on his crutch, he reached to pick it up. But colleagues pulled the bamboo's other end, and he tumbled into the dense grass.

“They forgot I had one leg,” the 45-year-old said, laughing. The trainer at a center for amputee farmers picked himself up and added: “We fall and we rise.”

The phrase encapsulates his journey since the civil war in Sierra Leone. From 1991 to 2002, conflict in the West African country created some 28,000 amputees like him. Amputation by machete was one terror tactic by rebels.

But even now, amputation rates remain high in Sierra Leone due to motorbike accidents, poor medical care and delayed treatment by traditional healers, according to medical researchers. The government doesn't collect data on amputees, but the United Nations estimates there are about 500,000 disabled people in the country.

Makieu's left leg was amputated as a child after rebels shot him and he received no medical attention for a week.

More than 20 years later, in a nation ranked near the bottom of the U.N. development index, amputees still face discrimination, often regarded as a shameful reminder of the civil war. Many resort to begging and live in the streets.

“No one cares about you as an amputee in Sierra Leone,” Makieu said.

The Farming on Crutches initiative where Makieu works near the capital, Freetown, offers a rare refuge. It aims to restore amputees’ confidence and independence by teaching them skills to start a farm business. They’ve trained 100 amputees and want to expand their work.

The training has transformed Makieu's life. After his amputation in 2002, he lived in a small room with a friend in Freetown, dependent on him for food, money and shelter.

At a displacement camp for 270 amputees in Freetown, he met Mambud Samai, the founder of Farming on Crutches and a pastor.

“Many (amputees) are being rejected by their families and communities. They don’t believe they have love,” the 51-year-old Samai said. He felt moved to help after being a refugee himself in Guinea during the civil war.

First, Samai organized beach football matches for amputees in Freetown, boosting their confidence. During a visit to Sierra Leone, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon saw the project and funded a site for an amputee football club outside the capital.

But Samai decided football was not enough. As a farmer, he saw agriculture as a path to self-sufficiency. In 2020, he set up a demonstration farm to teach amputees how to farm and become rural leaders.

His project's name reflects amputees' widespread use of crutches instead of prosthetic legs in Sierra Leone. Foreign donors distributed them after the civil war but many people say they don’t fit well and cause sores. And the country's only prosthetic clinic is too expensive for many.

Makieu was one of the first Farming on Crutches trainees in 2022. He learned how to use farm waste for organic fertilizer and bamboo sticks for fences. He set up a small farm operation this year with his wife, Zanib, also an amputee. They met during the training and now have a child.

Makieu wants to inspire future farmers.

“It’s my dream to teach people about life. It’s about changing your mindset,” he said.

Morning mist rolled over the nearby mountains as the camp rose for exercises ahead of a strenuous day. They gathered in a circle, harmonizing on local songs before Samai spoke.

“We are created for fellowship, not isolation,” he said. “When we return, we are not as we came. We go home to serve our community as rural leaders.”

Makieu interjected: “I sustain my life through farming, I met my wife here. This training can be a big package for you.”

But the vast majority of amputees in Sierra Leone have no such support.

Alimany Kani, 30, lives in a camp built by the Norwegian Refugee Council for amputees on the outskirts of Freetown. He lost his leg when he was a baby, to the same bullet that killed his father in the civil war. Despite holding a master’s degree in social work, he cannot find a job.

“Even if you have qualifications, an able-bodied with less education will always get the job,” Kani said.

Sierra Leone’s National Commission for Persons with Disability told AP that discrimination towards amputees has improved in the last decade since the Disability Act in 2011 aimed to provide equal opportunities and punish discrimination.

Kani firmly disagreed and called on the government to deliver reparations to victims of the civil war. Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2009 recommended that amputees receive pensions, access to healthcare, accommodation and education.

But many of those pledges remain unfulfilled, including for Kani. Only 1,300 out of 32,000 have received a full reparations package due to lack of resources, according to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration.

“The government don’t keep their promises. It’s inhumane,” Kani said.

There currently is no specific support for amputees from the government, the National Commission for Persons with Disability said.

Sierra Leone's health ministry, the president's office and the National Commission for Social Action office that manages the reparations program did not respond to questions.

A farming charity in Britain, Pasture for Life, is financing Farming on Crutches in full, but Samai said they need support from Sierra Leone's government to expand.

Meanwhile, the government is investing over $600 million in agriculture but some believe this will largely benefit large-scale agriculture over small-scale farmers, such as Farming on Crutches' trainees, who form 70% of the population.

Two such smallholders are cousins and Farming on Crutches trainees, Amara and Moustapha Jalloh, aged 19 and 21, in central Sierra Leone.

Both recently harvested rice and cassava. Moustapha, who was born without a leg, said his harvest surplus allowed him to pay for computer science training. He dreams of being an agricultural engineer.

“Any successful story, there must be painful experiences,” he said.

For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

An amputee begs in the streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Jack Thompson)

Alimany Kani sits outside his home in Waterloo, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Jack Thompson)

Amputees sit in front of their dwellings built by foreign NGOs in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Jack Thompson)

Mambud Samai, the founder of Farming on Crutches and a pastor, leads a session on sustainable farming in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Jack Thompson)

Farming trainees who have been amputated during Sierra Leone's civil war from 1991-2002, do warmup exercises before starting their day at the Farming on Crutches initiative in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Jack Thompson)