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Matt Finlin’s documentary, “The Movie Man,” has a seemingly simple and concentrated focus. It is contained in its attention on the 75-year-old Keith Stata, a remarkably persistent man who has been running a unique theatre tucked into the Ontario woods for forty-three years, but Finn neatly and subtly inserts in its folds a capacious, urgent appeal about hanging onto the things we love, fighting for it lest it slip away. This is Stata’s philosophy, powering him in his dogged struggle to keep Highlands Cinema running at full trot despite the odds being regularly stacked against him.
The biggest achievement of the film is it manages to make the viewer not just marvel at Stata’s incredible spirit and his radiantly inclusive ethos but also see and be utterly moved by the sheer vitality of his vision. Stata is essentially urging everyone to chip in and do their bit to preserve what they hold dear. It is the only way to stave off oblivion and ruin, and Finlin’s deeply loving, affectionate portrait layers this appeal with a profound, timeless emotional resonance and significance. It is a modest appeal but vested with a vast, sweeping potential for rescuing almost every other thing in the world today that’s either under attack or confronting extreme precarity.
Kinmount is a town with just a few hundred residents. Once a site of bustling businesses, most of it went into shambles after a devastating, immense fire in the 1940s. Stata grew in its shadow. As a kid, he never got into sports, playing around instead with his imagination, particularly in devising small-time sketches captured on a tiny camera gifted by his father. We watch snatches of his creativity and innovation with limited resources; working around them, he finds eccentric, joyous pockets of experiments mounted on a trifling scale but packed with abundant commitment and all-embracing energy. The snippets from his early sci-fi shorts are so enthralling and free-spirited that it left me wanting for more.
However, Stata couldn’t move away to pursue his first impulse of filmmaking. Not everyone gets the privilege of being able to run with the pull of ambition; nevertheless, he isn’t one to be cowed down by circumstance. Steering to what he felt was achievable, he channels all his interest and vigor into building a space for showing films and effectively mobilizing the community. What began as a special room with a twelve-foot-high screen gradually evolved and expanded into a theatre with five screens within twenty years. Highlands is no ordinary theatre. Stata imbues it with such a vividly personalized yet collectively generous touch it keeps inviting any unsuspecting entrant to be instantly charmed and develop a strong affective relationship.
People keep talking about how it’s like no other place, a theatre and an odd museum that can, as someone wryly muses, put the Academy to shame. Besides Stata’s hobby for collecting old projectors that’d have otherwise fallen to disrepair in abandoned cinemas all across the country, Highlands has halls functioning as memory lanes, filled with little, quirky, and glorious souvenirs loaded with nostalgic value for every generation and decade. It’s a place of many delights, with Stata keeping surprise and happiness at the centre of the visitors’ experience; a stormtrooper pops up for the introduction to a Star Wars film show.
Stata’s perseverance and unrelenting protectiveness of what he has been able to construct, including its intimately entrenched ties with the community of Kinmount, often running through multiple generations, is nothing short of miraculous. Someone calls him the “main heartbeat of the town.” Finlin gently maps the inextricable relationship between the cinema and the community, both relying on each other for their survival and growth.
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This is what the film traces with oodles of warmth, curiosity, and insight, as we are let into how Stata’s magnificent open heart makes him house more than forty cats, feeding squirrels and bears and birds, and he keeps at it even when things tighten. Though he doesn’t have a partner or kids, the life he leads couldn’t be a more nourishing one, enthused with love and kinship.
Finlin succeeds in transmitting Stata’s rousing earnestness; it is enveloping and endlessly inspiring, and I couldn’t help but get teary when his theatre finally reopens after the COVID-induced hiatus. “The Movie Man” sparks a stirring rush of emotions, bursting with zeal, honesty, and poignant authenticity. As Stata continues to soldier on, he does admit to his struggles with adapting to the digital transition and almost single handedly keeping the theatre afloat.
Nevertheless, he is buoyed forward by his keen drive for discovery and learning. His is an unsteady artistic enterprise, but, as Finlin renders with a richly deserved reverence, if we all huddle together and show up, his and many such similar spaces can keep standing tall.
