Moviegoers Love Their Local Indie Theaters, With New Survey Showing a Boom in Younger Audiences

People enjoy positive experiences, who could have guessed?

Support your local independent cinema!

One of my favourite Indie Theaters is the Lichtspiele Kino in Bamberg (in Germany): https://www.lichtspielkino.de/lichtspiel/

In 1954, the cinema opened under the name REX-LICHTSPIELE as a local neighborhood cinema — at that time there were still nine other movie theaters in the city!

In the mid-1970s, many things changed in Germany, and the previously rather tame films became increasingly more explicit: REX EROTICA experienced a second heyday, while other cinemas were already forced to close their doors. In 1992, the controversial film house suffered the same fate.

New life was brought to it in 1993 by two young Berliners, who turned the Rex into the RESIDENZ and for the first time attempted to establish an art-house cinema program in Bamberg.

Two years later, in June 1995, Gerrit Zachrich took over the cinema from them. During his student years, he had already co-founded the Bamberg Short Film Festival, the oldest short film festival in Bavaria, organized the first Bamberg Documentary Film Festival, and co-founded a student film club. Since 2000, he has run the business together with Diana Linz.

When it was decided in the same year that a multiplex cinema would open in the town, the last two independent mainstream cinemas gave up. The two art-house cinema operators used this opportunity to open the Odeon, a cinema for a broader range of art-house films. To this day, the small repertory cinema on Untere Königstrasse stands for cinematic art in Bamberg.

The LICHTSPIEL is a cultural center of the city. Events take place every month not only in the cinema hall but also in the adjoining cinema bars. This is why the Lichtspiel receives awards every year: from the German Federal Ministry of Culture, the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, and also from the European Commission in Brussels.

Minimal preshow trailers.

I know I’m preaching to the choir, but I want to highlight a huge reason I enjoy independent theatres.

Even if I’m going to an independent theater to see a big blockbuster film I watch maybe two film trailers and then the film starts. 7pm showtime? By 7:10pm the film is playing.

I saw Dune 2 at an AMC theater for IMAX and it was 30 minutes of trailers and commercials! Commercials are the worst. At least a film trailer might be interesting but a commercial for toothpaste?

We go to a local 3-cinema theater in our town at least once a month. Tickets are $7 and a large popcorn and two beers is $20. The place was on hard times about 10 years ago but now it’s always packed and Regal has actually shut down one of their own theaters in town (which was previously another independent theater that Regal ran into the ground after purchasing). The place is a local treasure for sure.

I’d go to the local indie theater but capitalism is determined to pay me as little as possible, it’s hard to justify the expense.