Crowdsourcing to Benefit Fairview Cinema 3

By now, most people are aware of the situation. The major Hollywood studios are phasing out film prints and distributing their movies only in digital format. This puts small, independently owned local movie theaters in a hard place. In order to keep showing movies and stay in business, they need digital equipment, which represents a major investment. Equipping just one theater costs $50,000.

This is the challenge faced by Fairview Cinema 3--our only independently owned local movie theater, just across the border in Greenport. There are three screening rooms at Fairview Cinema 3, and only one of them currently has a digital projector. To survive, the theater needs digital equipment in all three of its screening rooms.

Last summer, some folks from Hudson and beyond launched a campaign to raise money to help Fairview Cinema 3 stay in business. During the course of the late summer, fall, and early winter, they staged three fundraising events, which together raised about $15,000, but they still have a way to go before they have enough to buy a digital projector. Now, at the end of a long and uncommonly brutal winter, with the cockeyed optimism induced by the expectation of spring, they have launched an Indiegogo campaign with the hope of raising $35,000 in forty days, which with the $15,000 already in hand will be enough money to equip one more of the three theaters with a digital projector. Gossips encourages you to check out the Indiegogo campaign and do what you can to help this valued community resource survive.