Courtesy of Steve Noll
A man standing in front of a large movie screen holding his hands up in the air.
Steve Noll and the new movie screen at The Bartell.
The Bartell will not only welcome the Wisconsin Film Festival back this year, but it has increased its own programming of movies, says Steve Noll, Bartell board vice president, who’s spearheaded the new film series.
“It’s been a pet project of mine,” says Noll, who notes that the Bartell used to be a movie theater called The Esquire (one of many uses in the building’s long history), with a single screen and a main floor as well as balcony seating. The balcony was later remodeled to be a second, smaller theater. When the building was remodeled to host theater in the mid-1990s, those spaces flipped; now the larger stage is upstairs and can seat about 205.
That’s where films are shown and in the past year Noll and other volunteers applied for grants for upgrades, ultimately getting $40,000 for a new screen and other improvements including wiring and surround sound. Part of the grant requirements are that activities include the community and attract a diverse audience.
For the Bartell’s own series, Noll is “throwing up a bunch of stuff” to see what works. “I do get to be the one to pick the movies, but I don’t want it to be ‘The Steve Project,’” says Noll. So far he’s focusing on classics and independent films.
In January the Bartell partnered with Madison’s Antiwar Film Series, which had been showing films at the Central Library, for a free screening of Tantura, a documentary about Palestine, with a post-show discussion panel.
The Bartell has shown Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, a film many people have seen on small screens but “it’s almost never seen on the big screen any more,” Noll notes. People reported loving being scared among like-minded moviegoers. That was also true for a showing of The Big Lebowski, with its almost cultlike following that benefits from seeing it with other fans.
Next up at the Bartell: the 2022 cult indie film Hundreds of Beavers on March 28. “We’ve done almost no promotion and already sold almost half the tickets just from Facebook,” says Noll. [Editor's note: due to the rescheduling of a play, this film event has been rescheduled for March 30 at 5 p.m., followed by a showing of the indie film February at 7 p.m.]
He’s determined to keep Bartell movie tickets accessible at $5.
Ultimately, the goal is not to become a movie theater. It’s more a question of “what can we do with the theater when there’s no play scheduled?” says Noll. If the Bartell can “curate” a fairly set audience, there’s a chance “we can offer more and more.”
