What happens to a town when its last movie theater goes dark?
For more than a century, the local cinema was more than a place to see a film. It was where communities gathered, imaginations were awakened, and the wider world felt a little closer.
In THE LAST PICTURE SHOWS, filmmaker Rustin Thompson travels through ten states — nearly eleven thousand miles, 123 theaters — in search of what remains.
What begins as an elegy for abandoned cinemas becomes something more hopeful: a portrait of the people still fighting to keep the lights on — theater owners and caretakers preserving these spaces not as businesses, but as vital centers of culture, connection, and community.
Drawing its title from Peter Bogdanovich’s THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, Thompson asks what disappears when a town loses its movie theater — and what survives when someone refuses to let it go.
Join us for a conversation with filmmaker Rustin Thompson about moviegoing, community, and his new documentary, THE LAST PICTURE SHOWS, on INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, starting now.