When Marie Amaya and a friend stopped by Little Rock’s Market Street Cinema a few months ago, she was surprised to find she was one of the only people in the theater.
“We were thinking, ‘Wow, this is such a great theater, and they show movies nobody else in the city shows,’” Amaya says. But the movie she was seeing just had a few other people there.
Amaya wanted to help. As one of the only arthouse theaters in town dedicated to showing independent and low-budget films, Market Street brings in films that Amaya says she wouldn’t be able to see if Market Street were to close.
“They’re struggling with getting people in the seats,” Amaya says. “A lot of people don’t even know that they’re still open.”
And fewer people in the seats means less money for renovations and upgrades at Market Street, which recently installed a new digital projector and digital sound system in one of its theaters. To upgrade the other four screens to digital, however, would cost $75,000 per screen. And Market Street owner Matt Smith says they just don’t have the funding.
“We are the only independently owned and locally operated theater in central Arkansas,” Smith says. “It’s been a struggle since we opened. It’s a struggle to pay bills, and it’s struggle to keep going.”
Amaya suggested a series of dinner-and-a-movie nights, a collaboration between her vegan, plant-based catering company, Solfood Catering and the theater.
The first in the series is scheduled for Friday at Market Street. A seven-course meal will be served during a screening of the 2001 dramedy Tortilla Soup. The entire meal is vegetarian and the menu includes Nopales salad, tortilla soup, Mexican bread pudding, Yucatan stuffed tortillas, stuffed cherry tomatoes, fried plantains, porcupine cookies and a juice from Garden Press Juice Co. Food will be brought to viewers in their seats (small servings so they’re easy to handle) with courses timed to the film. When the characters eat, so will the audience, Amaya says.
Advanced reservations are required and tickets are $33 per person or $53 per couple.
Amaya says the dinner-and-a-movie nights will continue monthly, with the March event likely taking place on St. Patrick’s Day. Keep an eye on the calendar at marketstreetcinema.net or solfoodcatering.com for more information.