As the Arkadin Cinema & Bar kicks off its third season of outdoor programming this month, we caught up with co-owners Keith Watson and Sarah Baraba to talk about what it means coming back, some upcoming programming they’re excited about, and what the future holds for this tiny Bevo backlot.
What has it been like bringing Arkadin back for a third season on the backlot?
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Keith Watson: It’s been kind of nice. We hadn’t really planned to be outside until like years into doing this, and, you know, we were able to do that [in the first year]. Then the second year, we had some stuff where we had to replace the screen and just get things set up a little bit differently. And this year it’s been kind of nice because we’ve kind of got the feel down, we have the equipment ready, we had everything pretty much good. So it was a smoother ramp up into this year than it has been the past couple of years.
Can you tell us about the ideas you have for this season’s series and themes?
Sarah Baraba: Too many ideas!
KW: That’s always the problem, sorting through the many different concepts that we have. I don’t know that we’ll do as many of the continuing things, just because we’ve got great partners that we’re working with. Like [cult film series] Strange Brew, which has been around for a long time, used to be affiliated with Webster University. Now we’re happy to be working with Jon Scorfina, who’s organizing that. He picks movies, and it’s always a lot of fun. And Kate Stewart, who runs a new organization she founded called Silents, Please! STL, she does a silent movie every month, and that’s really cool because we love silent movies and we love having her bring those in. She’s so passionate about it and makes it so accessible to people when they think it’s something that’s kind of a little hard to wrap their arms around. As far as ideas for programming, we want to do a “Swinging Sixties” theme in May. And in June, we’re playing around with the idea of doing a “Tilda Fest,” based on Tilda Swinton because we booked this movie, Memoria, which I really love. It’s doing this kind of unique run where it’s supposedly never going to be on disc, home release, video on demand, or any of that stuff, only in theaters. We’re one of the theaters that Neon, who is releasing it, chose to distribute it. We thought it would be fun to play off of that and show some different Tilda Swinton movies. She’s cool. She’s kind of a figure like Nicolas Cage and David Lynch that we’ve played off of where they, I think, encapsulate the spirit of what we’re trying to do. She’s been in the most mainstream, action-type movie and then she’s been in the most artsy, ethereal type of work too. There’s this broad range that you can really play off of with her, and that’s kind of how we like to approach stuff.
In addition to that, you also have the pet-friendly “Bark-adin” screening of Best in Show coming up this month.
SB: Yeah, that’s the first time we’re going to do something like that. We’ve had a lot of people ask over the years, “Can we bring our dogs to the screening?” And we’re dog people. We love dogs. But, you know, dogs bark. They’re not always the best pal to bring out to a movie at the theater. So we thought we’d test this out and see how it goes. Hopefully it goes well and we can make it a regular thing. The night after we show Best in Show, we’re also doing a benefit for Tenth Life Cat Rescue, where we’re showing House. I think people have brought pets out to the theater incognito. Once we saw somebody with a rat resting on their shoulder. I don’t know that we’ll go for a rat-themed night, but maybe like a turtle situation.
Why are having these curation and screening partnerships with Silents, Please! and Strange Brew such an important part of a microcinema like Arkadin?
KW: I think, for us, it helps broaden our scope. We’re basically two people running this business, and we have our own preferences and the kind of movies that we think about more. Having somebody who comes in and has a distinct point of view or something they’re really passionate about, I mean, that’s what we really like with Silents, Please! Kate, who runs that, is just so passionate about it and really loves speaking about the movies beforehand. And with Strange Brew, part of what we love about that is that it connects what we’re doing to something that has been going on longer in the city. It has this rich history connected to some of the film stuff that’s been happening here. And we’ve worked with other people, like Josh Ray of QFest, and we’re hoping he may be able to do a screening as well. It’s all about just broadening our scope and bringing in people who maybe otherwise wouldn’t have heard of us, or programming things that we wouldn’t necessarily have thought to program or programmed in a different way than the partners that we bring in would.
SB: Something that’s also really important to us is having an interactive element to our movie theater and being really embedded in the community, something that you can’t do at the cineplexes. Having people feel like “Oh, this film is really important to me, and I would love to show it to people.” That’s something I think eventually we would love for Arkadin to be able to do. To be that place where, if somebody is really passionate about a film, talk to us about it. And maybe we’ll put it on screen.
KW: What’s cool is that we’ve actually been doing quite a few private events, and we get a lot of requests for those. Those are really, in a lot of ways, just as much fun as programming stuff, because somebody brings in something that they have a personal attachment to or that is just, for whatever reason, really special to them, and it’s not something we could in any way replicate. So even the private events have that same kind of feeling about them, where it’s somebody who’s really passionate about a movie they bring their friends. Sometimes they have to drag people out, but then they show something that’s really cool and they maybe talk about why they picked it. And it creates that same feeling that we want every time somebody comes out, which is this is a really cool, unique movie experience and something, like Sarah said, you couldn’t replicate or get at a multiplex.
What really excites you about the future of Arkadin?
KW: Well, getting open inside is definitely something that we’re looking forward to, and it’s scary in a way, because it involves some construction and cost involved with construction. We have certain limitations. We’re showing stuff outside, and it’s hard to show a really, really quiet movie out there, especially on like a Friday night. There are other limitations, like when the sun goes down. So being able to have a more consistent space inside where we can do full month-to-month programming is definitely something we’re looking forward to a lot, as well as continuing being outside, because I don’t want to downplay that. It has huge benefits, and it’s also really cool. There are certain things you show outside and they just work in a different way than you could do inside. Like last year we did Rear Window. You’re showing this movie about a guy looking out the window at these apartment buildings and looking into windows. And if you are outside at our theater, you can look around and you can see like, there’s an apartment.
SB: And you can look in their window.
KW: Exactly. I remember during that movie, the woman who has an apartment that directly overlooks the theater turned on her light and went into her kitchen. She didn’t do anything, but immediately your mind goes to, what’s she up to? So things like that you totally could never replicate inside. It just couldn’t happen. We’re excited to get open, but we’re also excited to keep playing with this outdoor space and unify them in a more coherent way than we’re able to right now with just being outside ad hoc.
SB: We really would like to be able to have people discuss movies after they’re over or bring in folks to introduce movies, or bring in more guests. That’s something that’s harder to do outside with the unpredictability of the weather and things. It would just be nice to have a space where whether the event is going to happen or not was not dependent on weather.
Why do you think having a microcinema like Arkadin is such an important part of the greater St. Louis film community?
KW: I think part of the way we’ve seen it is that there are a lot of great film events that happen in the city. There’s the Webster Film Series, the St. Louis International Film Festival and all the stuff that Cinema St. Louis does, QFest and all of those things. There’s Late Night Grindhouse, which is really awesome and cool, and they’ve been going 12 years now. But there’s less of a place that’s one specific theater that does this kind of offbeat or unique programming year-round. And even with us, we haven’t been year-round, because it’s been dependent on the season. We’d love to work with all of those people I just mentioned and be this one little place where you don’t need a lot of people to come out to it, but you build this this little space and you create this one-time event that has this really unique quality and captures that communal aspect of coming out to a film and sharing it with this intimate group of people. I think that’s really where we’re focused, and that can be something as silly as our “Drinkolas Cage” series, or it can be something as heady as a movie like Memoria. It can run the gamut. But the core for us is this communal, very unique, intimate feeling around coming out to a movie.
