Business Spotlight: Cinema Center
Molly Conner
Downtown Fort Wayne
Cinema Center is far more than a movie theater. It’s a community—a gathering place for people to explore art and humanity through film. And you don’t need to be a film expert or enthusiast to attend a screening. Cinema Center is for anyone who’s curious about movies and storytelling.
The Cinema Center was founded back in 1976 after the Spectator Theater (Fort Wayne’s last arthouse theater) closed its doors. After picking up the torch, this not-for-profit theater has been bringing a thoughtful curation of visual storytelling to Fort Wayne audiences for decades.
Being Fort Wayne’s only arthouse movie theater has come with challenges, but the Cinema Center has proven its resilience. It has survived COVID shutdowns and the rise of streaming services, both of which have decimated movie theaters on a national level.
Cinema Center isn’t just surviving, though. It’s thriving. Its annual film festival, Hobnobben, continues to grow every year. This year, they’re starting a new film club. And they continue to bring in experts and filmmakers from all over the industry for commentary and audience Q&A.
To learn more about the Cinema Center’s mission and what to expect from this year’s programming, I stopped by to talk with executive director, Art Herbig.
Meet Fort Wayne’s only arthouse theater — the Cinema Center!
Molly: For those who aren’t familiar with the Cinema Center, can you talk about your mission and what people can expect to experience when they visit?
Art: We’re part of the Arts Campus—just a little off the beaten path—and our particular art is film. Because of that, we show movies, but we like to say that the movie is the start of the conversation, not the end.
After a movie, we’ll often invite people to join us in our Spectator Lounge for a discussion, sometimes with subject matter experts. For instance, when we first showed Everything Everywhere All at Once, we invited someone who studied Asian representation in superhero films to join us for conversation.
Other times, we’ll bring in filmmakers. When we screened Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, we brought in the production designer, and we talked about animation, physical spaces, and tying it all together with live actors.
As an arthouse, I think we sometimes get pigeonholed; people think we don’t show certain stories. But really, there’s no movie or genre off limits. The whole purpose of showing a movie at Cinema Center is to figure out what kinds of conversations we can have with it. And these conversations are for everyone, whether you’re a filmmaker or just interested in learning more about films and storytelling.
Through these conversations, we have a chance to demystify the art of filmmaking. It’s also a chance to re-mystify it—to discover the magic of making movies.