In the fall of 2009, the historic Apollo Theatre opened its doors to customers following a complete renovation by its new owners: Oberlin College and Conservatory. For Professor of Cinema and Media and English Geoff Pingree and Professor of Cinema and Media Rian Brown-Orso, the Apollo’s re-opening was one of the first steps in what has become a long and ongoing challenge to transform the space into a cultural and community stronghold, part of a small but beloved group of arthouse cinemas sprinkled across the nation.

Following the purchase of the Apollo, the College administration contracted Cleveland Cinemas, a local business that is far more suited to the managerial struggles of running a movie theater. With their involvement came legal obligations to screen first-run films: newly-released movies that play exclusively in theaters. Think Project Hail Mary or The Drama.

Were the Apollo to stay in its pre-renovation state, containing one massive theater seating 900, Pingree and Brown-Orso’s goal would be impossible; the Apollo would simply not have the screens required to show the indie and foreign films the professors desired while also meeting the first-run quota. Luckily, the two were involved in the renovation process. 

With control of the blueprints, Pingree and Brown-Orso worked to divvy up the enormous space the building provided, dividing it into a 400-seat main theater and a smaller 61-seat screening room on the first floor, and changing the second floor to accommodate several studios, which now serve as classrooms for the Cinema and Media department. This layout would allow the Apollo to continue to act as a traditional commercial theater while also providing the space for the kinds of films Pingree and Brown-Orso wanted to screen. 

So, nearly 15 years ago, the theater was fully capable of screening both types of films, and yet, until the spring of 2025, it remained a fully commercial, first-run-centric theater. Why?

The administration didn’t want to lose money, Pingree explained. 

“The College kind of got cold feet on the financial side and continued to work with Cleveland Cinemas … to program [exclusively] first-round movies.” 

Ultimately, there was a fundamental difference between what the professors and the former administration thought the Apollo could and should be. 

Pingree and Brown-Orso would simply have to bide their time, waiting for shifts in College attitudes, to realize their goal of historic and foreign film screenings at the Apollo. In the meantime, they turned their attention to the community, creating the Apollo Outreach Initiative in 2012.

“[AOI is] one of my highlights of teaching at Oberlin … the way it worked was that we had an arts outreach coordinator who was paid to teach a class every semester,” Brown-Orso said. “Students would enroll in that class, and that outreach coordinator would organize trips to different parts of Oberlin and also to Cleveland, and take the students physically with cameras and animation supplies and art supplies to schools to make animations with kids.” 

After their key roles in the renovation of the theater, Pingree and Brown-Orso were adamant to prove to the town that this change in ownership would not signify a “College takeover” of the community. AOI was their way of doing this, and regardless of College resources, they were determined to make it a success.

The duo raised funds for the program wholly through outside donations, running it without direct financial support from the administration. These funds were mainly used to pay the program’s outreach coordinator, who was key in developing the strong relationships with local high schools needed for its success. 

For the nine years that the program ran, it remained fully self-funded, despite hopes that the administration would recognize the program’s qualities and grant it some resources. Eventually, in 2018, the program was forced to shut down as fundraising efforts dried up. 

At that point, nine years after the College first purchased the theater, the cultural community center that Pingree and Brown-Orso dreamed of seemed farther away than ever.

“[Of] the two purposes we had: one did not go well because the College kind of blocked it, and the other went well until we ran out of money and just couldn’t fundraise anymore,” Pingree told me. With that, the dream for the Apollo lay dormant for seven years.

But, after a change in College president and several changes in deans, the dialogue around what the theater could be reopened. On Feb. 4, 2025, the Apollo Theatre, in collaboration with the Oberlin Film Society, screened Ridley Scott’s contemplative classic, Blade Runner.

Co-opting the name from a since-passed student organization that screened similar films on campus, the OFS screens a different film on Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons each week during the fall and spring semesters. Composed of Pingree and Brown-Orso, the society also employs Annie Yang, OC ’24 — who handles getting rights to screen the films shown each week — and collaborates with Cleveland Cinemas employees Michael Dean and Joel Mundoki.

The OFS screening offers an incredibly complete package. Tickets for each show are shockingly cheap: $2 for students and $4 for general admission. The films shown range from beloved classic Hollywood flicks, such as The Long Goodbye by Robert Altman, to obscure but thought-provoking foreign films, such as Rebels of the Neon God by Tsai Ming-Liang. Before the showing, no ads or trailers are shown; instead, the pre-show consists of a short student-made animation and a quick speech about the film, whose orators range from OFS members Pingree or Yang, to students involved in cinema at Oberlin, to Apollo employees.

The quality of this deal has not gone unnoticed; the OFS has seen stellar attendance, Pingree explained.

 “You have 50 or 60 people in there watching Stop Making Sense. Before that, on Sunday afternoon, [or] Tuesday, it was two people watching a first-run movie,” Pingree said.

The OFS is able to use that extra revenue generated to pay Yang and acquire the films it shows, moving toward becoming self-sustaining.

Since its start last year, the OFS has been steadily gaining momentum in both community and student engagement. People are starting to build off of what the OFS has created. Student organizations, such as the Oberlin Film Co-op and the newly-formed Oberlin Cinema Collective, host discussions on OFS films after screenings. The Cinema Collective also picks motivated students to give the aforementioned pre-show speeches. 

“We’re kind of becoming a hub between Oberlin Film Society, Oberlin Cinema Collective, and Oberlin Film Co-Op,” Brown-Orso said. “We’ve also reached out to different parts of the Conservatory to have live music before these screenings. … We’d love the Oberlin Film Society to put out a call to make the cool new trailer that goes before the movie, saying, ‘Buy popcorn and turn off your cell phone and emergency lights are over there.’ And we could have an ongoing [creation of] artistic short films and trailers that are made by Oberlin students.”

Looking toward the community outside of the College, the OFS has seen progress as well. Yang specifically mentioned how the number of community members in attendance shocked them. The typical student-to-community member distribution sat around 60-40, but on specific showings, such as Brazil by Terry Gilliam, Yang saw a nearly 50-50 split. 

The OFS screenings are bringing community and College together in a way not often seen in Oberlin; on the same night and place as a 19–20-year-old student discovers what will soon be their favorite film, a local Oberlin resident re-watches a classic they first saw in theaters. 

Today, the idea that Pingree and Brown-Orso first had in 2009 sees its first real progress after over a decade of stagnation. With that, they start to wonder what the OFS could be. With momentum growing, they hope to soon add more screenings to their weekly schedule, to harness students’ passion into creative projects centered around the films, and to provide a consistent space for people to gather and discuss great art. Maybe one day, even AOI can be brought back.

All of these goals, while possible, require resources and human energy to make them function. Pingree, Brown-Orso, Yang, the Oberlin Film Co-op and Cinema Collective, and the hundreds of people who have ever attended an OFS screening prove that the energy exists to make it happen. The question is, will the resources come as well?