Stuart Cinema & Cafe owner Emelyn Stuart is a solution-oriented person. If there’s a problem, she says there has to be a way to fix it. That’s what led her to start the first Black Latina-owned movie theater in New York – and why she’s now preparing to build a multiplex in another location.
Having produced films for a decade, Stuart was frustrated with the obstacle of getting distribution. She said the higher-ups who would decide her projects had no audience, like when she met with a “gatekeeper” while trying to get her movie The Turnaround into theaters.
“I remember walking out of there and thinking, so that’s it. So my entire investment, the investment of all these people, the work of all these writers, directors, actors, is void. Because this one guy in this one place made this decision, why does he get to decide that?” she said. “I said, I’m going to build my own movie theater, and I will decide what people should watch.'”
She found a warehouse in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint that had trucks parked in it, signed the lease in April of 2018, built her theater from scratch and opened by Sept. 1 that same year.
“The electricity, the floor, the carpeting, the walls – everything I built from scratch,” she recalled. “I could have bought a theater that was already built that was going out of business that was vacant. But I didn’t want that […] Because I’m essentially buying somebody else’s dream, right?”
Stuart struggled to get a loan, and investors who had supported her past films weren’t interested in contributing. So she liquidated her assets – houses, cars, she said – and paid for everything with cash.
Stuart, who is Dominican, had a vision for her theater to be different. She wanted to be able to eat empanadas, a lamb burger and tres leches cake. “I like to eat dinner, I don’t want to have a hot dog,” she said.
Her contractors and architect were doubtful, saying her building plans wouldn’t work for a theater and this was going to be “different.”
“Yeah, that’s the point,” she said.
The project was a massive learning process, she explained. She had to learn how to get movies from studios and how to serve food. But she could tell people liked what Stuart Cinema was doing.
The 50-seat theater does more than just show movies in English and Spanish. It has seen five film festivals, including Stuart’s own Ocktober Film Festival. It also hosts church services, meditations, panels, meetings, video game sessions and comedy shows.
Now, Stuart said her single screen at Stuart Cinema is maxed out. There’s a waitlist for the space, so she’s decided to build a multiplex.
“I’ve accomplished the things I wanted to accomplish with the space,” she said. “I’m ready to expand and do it, you know, four times over – because I’m going from one screen to three screens, one location to two locations, a cafe to a full restaurant, and I’m even including a bookstore, because I love books.”
She’s working to build the new project in the neighborhood where she grew up in Sunset Park.
