Here's the "No" metaphor you missed: the need to diversify arthouse (column)

The buzz of the fall season is alive with celebrations of movie magic, from Steven Spielberg's autobiographical "The Fabelmans" to "Empire of Light," Sam Mendes' romantic ode to old movie theaters. But the most incisive statement on the state of cinema is already there.

It comes from Jordan Peele's 'Nope', which confirms the filmmaker's ability to generate suspense and awe in very unpredictable places - but this Western sci-fi showdown also doubles as a meditation on how film history marginalizes key characters and more importantly, assesses how the industry continues to alienate key voices. And, intentionally or not, it's also a window into the need to diversify arthouse audiences.

I won't go into "No" spoilers, but it's brilliant conceit for Peele to imagine the Hollywood horse wrestlers who are the focus of the film as the grandchildren of the black jockey who was sitting astride the horse in one of the very first moving images ever captured on film. Generations later, the family still hovers on the edge of Hollywood as spectators to the greatest machine, unsure how they fit in.

It's a stark allegory not just for people of color in Hollywood, but also for overlooked audiences, and a good excuse this column could ask for to explore why arthouses need to evolve. As Hollywood reinforces longstanding diversity concerns, a much bigger challenge faces independent exhibitors. They serve a fickle audience that has become even more fickle during the pandemic, but many of these theaters are chasing the wrong demographics. The arthouse cliché is that older white viewers provide its basis, but that perception comes at the cost of attracting more viewers who want to see themselves on screen.

Of course, the success of "Everything Everywhere All at Once" is a watershed moment for Asian American cinema, but its popularity owes much to A24's enormous resources and an exit strategy that is more like a mainstream film than a specialized release. . If arthouses — and the distributors who rely on them — want more diverse audiences, they need to embrace programming that engages those audiences first and foremost. And to do that, they have to work together.

This is the founding principle of Art House Convergence, but over the past few years this consortium of exhibitors has faced dire straits on its own initiative, due to all sorts of internal policies that are not worth worth reviving here. Today, the organization has Sundance as a fiscal sponsor and a transition committee focused on creating a board of directors and expanding membership to address past diversity issues.

Jessica Green, a member of the Art House Convergence Transition Task Force, told me that AHC's new identity will be tied to a transformational approach to the future of arthouse itself. "There was a sense of what arthouse was, what an independent film, that was pretty whitewashed," she said. "It didn't work too hard to center the non-white experience."

Green, who is the artistic director of the Chromatic Black Collective, also manages the Ida B. Wells Fund, which invests in short films by emerging black filmmakers that the collective will market and distribute. As the former director of the Houston Cinema Arts Festival and the Maysles Film Center in Harlem, she has spent years working to engage audiences of color with the bold, thought-provoking kind of filmmaking that keeps local film culture alive and inspires the new generations of cinephiles with an adventurous taste. .

"Demographics are changing," she said. "Right now, it's transform or die. The space has to change completely to accommodate these demographic shifts in order to be viable in the future."

Green said AHC wants to add members from places and conservation projects across the country that haven't been as well represented in the past. “We are really trying to expand our membership to have a representative base from which we hope leadership candidates will emerge,” she said.

She stressed the need for film festivals, societies and other organizations to work to "get out of artistic geographic ghettos" and "go straight into communities". That's essential, but it goes hand-in-hand with serving those audiences with programming that excites them in ways that the art house scene hasn't always been able to do.

Saul Williams, co-director of this summer's Afrofuturist arthouse release "Neptune Frost," told me he recognizes these barriers of...