Let’s talk about movies at the library. No, not movies you can check out, but the ones you can watch here. Why? Because very few of you seem interested to attend our FREE screenings that have been happening all summer long! Let’s look at the facts: The movie theater in town is undergoing some extreme renovations. Due to this, they have been closed for months. In the meantime, we at the Library thought this would be a good time to take the reins and show some films in our Community Room. We are able to do this as using a blanket movie license purchased by the Friends of the Library, which allows us to show almost every film ever produced. The Friends also upgraded our projector last month when the previous projector “retired.”
Every Friday evening we’ve been showing a different Star Wars movie to go along with our Summer Reading Program theme of ‘A Universe of Stories’ and every Saturday we’ve hosted ‘Market Morning Movies,’ showing other family-friendly space-related movies. On a good week, we get one or two patrons coming in. That’s not a lot!
Perhaps the lack of attendance is due to a lack of discussing said movies in this column, but that can’t be the entire story. I was under the impression that Star Wars was one of the more popular franchises in cinematic history – what accounts for the lack of local interest? It could be due to copyright restrictions that prevent us from specifying which Star Wars movie we plan on showing in our marketing material. The vagueness doesn’t exactly elicit excitement.
This problem of movie attendance isn’t new. It stretches back to our attempt at Tuesday Classic Movies last year, where average attendance at these programs was about one or two people. Certainly not enough to sustain the program, as we have a number of people clamoring to use our Community Room.
Whatever the case may be, this may be your last chance to see a movie at the library, so come check it out! Star Wars Weekly’s last installment is 5:30 p.m. on Friday, August 23, and Market Morning Movies go another two weeks at 11:30 a.m. on Saturdays, August 24 and 31. Bring your own snacks!
