Going to the movies isn’t a universal experience. Valley film buff hopes to change that

For Roque Rodriguez, movies are sacred.

Whether it’s the latest Marvel or Star Wars blockbuster or a new love story from indie director Sean Baker, watching movies is like a Sunday service.

“The theater is my church,” says Rodriguez, a graphic designer and filmmaker who co-founded and ran Fresno’s Swede Fest film festival for 15 years before it ended in 2023.

His new project, Cen Cal Cinema, looks to bring movie-going experiences to areas of the central San Joaquin Valley that lack access to the cinematic arts. The program’s first screening is 7 p.m. Jan. 24 outside the CMAC building on Van Ness Avenue in downtown Fresno. The event is free and open to all ages.

Fresno has a strong history movie-going culture. In the boom of the late 1990s, there were more than a half-dozen theaters across the city with some 50 movies screens — well above the national average at the time.

But that was far from universal.

Rodriguez grew up in Firebaugh, a rural agriculture town on the west side of Fresno County. His earliest movie intake came from the afternoon programming on KMPH, or one of the three video rental stores in town.

There was a movie theater in Firebaugh. He remembers seeing “Willow” there with an audience of about 10 people. But it closed after about a month.

The nearest multiplex was a 45-minute drive away in Merced.

“There wasn’t any access to having these communal movies experiences.”

Rodriguez didn’t get that until he moved away to college and saw a screening of the Jet Li film “Black Mask” at a packed theater in downtown Long Beach. “Everyone there was engaged and having so much fun,” he says.

“It just became this massive, raucous fun thing.”

In a way, that’s the kind of experience Cen Cal Cinema is looking to replicate.

The program takes its inspiration from Solar Cinema (a mobile movie theater in southern Arizona that operates out of a solar-powered van) and from the Rolling Roadshow series put on by movie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse.

That series is known for location-specific screenings. It showed “Jaws” at a beach resort in Texas. “There Will Be Blood” screened at the Kern County Museum.

The initial run of Cen Cal Cinema will include five films with screenings through June.

Cult comedy “UHF” screens 7 p.m. Jan. 24 at CMAC

These will be elevated community experiences.

The debut film is Weird Al Yankovic’s 1989 cult comedy “UHF.” It’s being screened outside of Community Media Access Collaborative, as a homage to the movie’s plot, which involves Yankovic creating a series of satirical programs for a local television station.

Along with the movie, there will be games (like Wheel of Fish, which is taken directly from the movie), music (an accordion player, this being a Weird Al movie) and a a “Weird Al” look-alike contest (judged by audience applause).

Cen Cal Cinema was funded through a nearly $40,000 Expanded Access to Arts and Culture Measure P grant. That money was used to build out the mobile cinema (a digital projector, sound equipment and a giant screen) and to set programming.

The first five screenings will be in neighborhoods around Fresno and are an experiment of sorts, Rodriguez says, to feel out what can be done before broadening the project into Fresno County at large.

And there are still some unknowns.

Like, where the movie-going experience fits in the world of streaming services. Box office tickets prices continue to rise and while the number of movie-goers has grown year over year, it has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. And while Fresno’s historic theaters are experimenting with classic movies, big-budget blockbusters dominate local multiplexes.

“Fresno has been getting a lot of indie films,” Rodriguez says, “but they don’t last very long.”

He admits even his theater-going has decreased in the past year and that he started creating a space at home where he can watch movies.

Also, there’s a question about how to best curate movies for the diverse communities he wants the program to serve. Those are things that will be figured out over the next six months.

“I believe in the art form,” Rodriguez says, “and I think it speaks for itself.”

This story was originally published January 23, 2025 at 5:30 AM.