You Should Start A Cinema Club
...and tips for how to do it.
About once a month I pick a showtime for a specific movie in theaters, shoot out a group text to a bunch of friends announcing what we’ll be watching and when, and welcome them to join and bring their friends. There’s an optional hangout at a nearby bar afterwards.
I call this “Cinema Club.” It’s fun. You should start one.
Why You Should Start A Cinema Club
It’s just fun to go to the movies with a group of people. I love a loner matinee as much as any critic (it would be tough to do this job if you didn’t), but there’s something equally great about rounding up a group of friends for a movie and hanging out afterwards.
It’s a great way to make friends/build a social circle. It’s an easy thing to invite people to. Building up a friend group can be hard, throwing events, parties, or organizing one-on-one hangouts can take a lot of effort or be high-commitment for a new acquaintance. But asking someone you just met if they like movies, and saying “hey a bunch of us go to a movie once a month, come join us if you want” is a lot more low-key and low commitment than asking someone to come to a party, or a dinner, or even to have coffee one-one-one.
Movies are a great conversation starter. It’s like the ultimate ice-breaker. Take a group of strangers and ask them to socialize and it’s hard to know where to start. Have them all go on a ~2 hour narrative journey together and immediately they all have a shared experience that they can talk about, even if it’s what they didn’t like about it. Artful movies also have a way of creating an opportunity to talk about life. Online film discourse is mostly annoying and toxic, but talking about movies in real life with friends is in my experience mostly pleasant and fun.
It promotes cinema. Since I started my film club a couple people have mentioned that coming to cinema club was the first or only time they had gone to a movie in theaters in months. I think cinema is cool and I want theaters to survive so I’m happy to be responsible for getting someone out to see a movie in theaters they might otherwise have waited to watch at home (or not watched at all). There’s a lot of people who enjoy going to the movies, but don’t enjoy going alone, so you might be providing an opportunity to do something they like anyway.
A Few Tips for Starting Your Own Cinema Club
Know your audience. As the self-proclaimed cinema club instigator, it’s your job to try to pick movies that will interest the group, or to select a variety to appeal to the range of interests within the group. This will vary widely depending on your own interests and the interest level of the people you’re inviting/hanging out with but your cinema club could focus mostly on blockbusters, horror-fare, art house, or whatever, there’s no wrong way to do it, just be mindful that what you pick will shape the tone, and who will continue to come.
Pre-plan a post-movie hang. We usually go to a nearby bar. You can try to organize a formalized discussion of the film afterwards, but I usually keep it casual. Discussion of the film will happen organically, some people are just interested in hanging out, that’s totally fine. Put these details in the invite you send out so everyone knows where to go when the movie gets out.
Support an independent theater if you can. If you’re going to send a couple hundred dollars of business somewhere you might as well boost an indie theater if you have one. I also like not having assigned seating for this kind of thing because it feels more casual if people can just walk up and by a ticket and go in, but it wouldn’t be too hard to coordinate pre-buying assigned seats if people want to sit together.1
Experiment and make it your own. I’m hoping to try out different things, maybe eventually organize a private screening of something for the group. You could have a more formal discussion afterwards, you could promote yours online. There’s not really a right or wrong way here if people are getting enjoyment out of it, but don’t feel like it has to be a big, formally organized thing. The minimalist version: where you just text a few friends a showtime, hang out with whoever comes, and call it a cinema club is completely valid.
So far it’s been a blast. About 8-12 people have shown up each time. At the last one, we even picked up a new member after someone who was in our screening of Sentimental Value overheard our post-movie circle discussing the film and wanted to join our chat. She ended up coming to the next one as well! I encourage the people I invite to bring their friends and then offer to add them to the group invite for next time.
Some movies go over well and incite a lot of discussion, some are more polarizing, some don’t warrant as much conversation, but whatever the case it’s always a good time, and a nice excuse to get out and socialize a bit. You could start with as few as two friends who are into film and grow from there.
One of my stated goals for 2026 (and likely beyond) is to invest more time and effort into things that exist in the world and not just on a screen. Cinema Club has been a fun way to do this locally, so I though another way I could fulfill this goal is by trying to convince you to start your own Cinema Club as well. If you start one, or already do something similar, send me an email.2 If there are enough of us maybe I’ll organize a Cinema Club leaders group where we can swap tips and picks for upcoming films.
Assigned seating isn’t necessarily an indie/megaplex specific thing but in my town all the indies have general admission and every chain has assigned.
contact@thomasflight.com
I work for a magazine that runs monthly film screenings, and it's genuinely exciting to get to know our regulars, learn what they think about the movies, and to realise just how many people are willing to spend time with the weird and wonderful films we screen (Armenian arthouse! Chilean surrealism!). Most of the time I prefer going to the movies alone, but it's a real pleasure to be in a cinema with people you know, all cheering or gasping at what's on screen.
Starting mine next weekend! Beginning with some lighter fare by taking in Hoppers, excited to see where it goes from there!