In May 2024, the SNF Parkway Theatre unveiled a renewed, energized, and community-centered vision the iconic art house cinema, which first cranked up the movie projector nearly 110 years ago.
Camille Blake Fall is the vice chair of the board of directors of the SNF Parkway, which is home to the Maryland Film Festival (MDFF). She has been working with the MdFF in some capacity since 2005. Scot Spencer, board chair of the Maryland Film Festival and a proud 30-year resident of Baltimore City, has an affiliation with MDFF that reaches back to 2018 when he joined the board. They spoke with Baltimore Fishbowl to flesh out and amplify their renewed vision.
The Parkway opened its doors as a movie theater on Oct. 13, 1915. An anchor building at the corner of North and Charles streets, the theater underwent several renovations, rebrandings, and rebirths over the decades until it closed its doors seemingly for good in 1978 after struggling for years. Decades later, the Maryland Film Festival (MdFF) acquired the Parkway from the City of Baltimore, aiming to turn it into a year-round film center with a restored original auditorium and two new screens.
In 2017, the MdFF Stavros Niarchos Foundation Parkway (SNF Parkway) opened its doors for the Opening Night Gala of the 19th annual Maryland Film Festival. In the first three years of operations, SNF Parkway Theatre was well on its way to sustainability as a full-time cinema and increasing box office sales along with membership and donations. But the combination of streaming and the COVID-19 pandemic hit the nonprofit art house cinema hard, and despite tax credits and other support, SNF Parkway’s operations were put on hiatus in 2022 to regroup and reimagine the theater’s future.
The results were revealed in that May 2024 meeting. Spencer told Fishbowl that above all, people should know that the vision which evolved and that is being advanced was informed by input from many people across a range of areas of Baltimore. Ultimately, they realized that solely focusing on film itself was not going to be enough. Gone were the days of showing films daily, at least for the SNF Parkway Theatre.
“So, there were two responses, one of which was community-driven, one of which was reality-based in sort of a business model, and I think that helped inform how we could best make use of the institution, the anchor institution that we have at the corner of North of Charles,” Spencer said. “It certainly doesn’t abandon the core elements of film that have been the hallmark of the building and the institution [for] as long as we’ve been in the building. But it adds to it. It is additive to film. Literally additive when we say, ‘film plus.’ Film plus is really sort of the idea that not only do you have a screening, but you also have a conversation or an event that is framed by the film.”
Fall added that the concept of film plus is not new in the independent art house cinema ecosystem. It became crystalized, though, as a core function of SNF Parkway as Fall worked with Daniel Cronin, CFO of Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). The two co-chaired the community-based steering committee, which comprised a wide variety of age groups, racial groups, sexual and gender identities, creatives, and more, who helped conceive of the five-pillar plan that Fall and Spencer presented to the community for the theater in May.
“It became very clear that the advent of streaming has just decimated the art house cinema space when you don’t have to get off the sofa, change your clothes, hire the babysitter, find parking,” Fall said. “You can stream a film within either same day or within two days or seven days of it hitting the theater. So, to encourage folks to get out of their homes, particularly after the pandemic and into a cinema with all that that entails, there was a natural recognition … that you’ll need to do something to get me out of my house. And so, film plus is a term of art that bubbled up organically in our work to try to reflect that sense.”
Fall emphasized that they were already having programming around the films they showed, whether it was conversations with filmmakers, or bringing in academics to talk about science on film. It will simply now be what she called “the thing that would continue us forward, so it’s a continuation and maybe a more robust fashion of what we already started to do as a nonprofit, mission driven art house.”
They’re participating in Artscape in several ways, one of which is the world premiere of “Windows on Charles,” a public art installation featuring short films and artworks from Baltimore filmmakers and beyond, illuminating the windows of 10 local businesses and storefronts in the Station North neighborhood. Spencer predicted it would be especially spectacular if viewed in the evening. Of course, there will be short films presented in partnership with other Baltimore-based groups, like BOPA, Wide Angle Youth Media, JHU-MICA Film Centre, and more.
In addition to holding fast to and working towards their stated goal of making “Film for Everyone,” Fall and Spencer’s outlook for the theater includes expanding to include immersive digital projection, gaming, AR and VR in the SNF Parkway community. They want to be a hub for new media educators, a venue for gaming exhibitions, and a backdrop for competitions.
Fall described gaming and new media as a movement not that different from filmmaking.
“Gaming/new media…[involves] innovative ways to take a moving image and manipulate it, right? And gaming will be one piece of that, where you can actually project whatever the gaming is, onto the big screen, and you’ll have two players, or it’s a four-player game, and it’ll be on the screen, and then you have 400 people in the audience watching this play on the screen,” Fall said.
“It’s developing. It’s definitely at the forefront of how we think about images and imagery, and how we use the moving image,” Fall said. “And so we are going to tap into that and really, again, represent that slice of the community that’s looking for a place to engage in that way.”
Spencer agreed, emphasizing the significance of these communities, both film plus and gaming/new media, and wanting to meet them where they are.
“These are people who have a common, shared set of experiences, a shared set of preferences,” Spencer said. “And so, part of what we are responding to is the desire for those communities to have a space that is welcoming to them. The range of experiences that are within the Parkway are responsive and meeting communities, those distinct communities, where they are. And I think that’s one of the important features that we need to underscore for where we’re going and how we’re going to be a service in a partnership with communities going forward.”
Fall agreed, noting that their partnership with their neighborhood, their neighbors, local filmmakers, and more is a reflection of their ethos of operating the Parkway so that people feel like they have a home there.
“I can’t underscore enough how that is a priority for us to make sure that everyone feels welcome,” Fall said.
