YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio — When the Little Art Theatre set out to land a $100,000 grant to fund a stylish new marquee, with a nod to its century-long history, the cozy Ohio arthouse theater had some talented help. Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Steve Bognar is a resident of Yellow Springs, the bohemian college town between Columbus and Cincinnati where the theater is a downtown fixture. Besides being one of Little Art’s biggest fans, Bognar is an advocate for small independent theaters everywhere as they struggle to survive in an industry now dominated by home streaming.
The eight-minute video Bognar directed and filmed for the theater’s grant application set out to illustrate just what its loss could mean to people, communities — even society as a whole. “The fact that this movie theater is smack in the middle of town, it’s like the heart of our little town,” he said in a recent interview. Bognar, who with the late Julia Reichert won an Oscar in 2020 for the feature documentary “American Factory,” began the video with some 100 different classic film titles flashing past on the Little Art Theatre’s current marquee.
He then folded in interviews with local residents, who reminisced about their favorite movies and moviegoing experiences. It wasn’t lost on the documentarian that such communal experiences are becoming increasingly rare, as rising home and charter school enrollments fragment school populations, in-person church attendance falls and ev.
