North Park Theatre needs your help Buffalo!

It’s a beautiful building unto itself, a shining example of art and architecture on Hertel Avenue, something that people of Buffalo can be proud to offer as a place to visit in the city: the North Park Theatre, designed and built by the same man who gave us Shea’s Buffalo Theatre downtown.

This landmark of cinema in the Queen City has been around for 105 years and has been the launching point for several movies, from Vincent Gallo’s premiere of “Buffalo ‘66” in 1998 to special debuts of “Marshall,” about the life of late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (starring the late Chadwick Boseman), which was filmed primarily in Buffalo in 2017, and “Cabrini,” earlier this year, about a 19th century woman who came to the United States from Italy to provide health care and housing for the city’s immigrants, and which also was filmed largely in Buffalo in 2020.

But now the North Park Theatre, home to the Buffalo International Film Festival, is asking for the support of the City of Good Neighbors.

“After faithfully serving WNY for 10 years, our movie projector has reached the end of its life cycle,” says Ray Barker, the theater’s program director, in a video posted to social media last week. In order to purchase a new 4K laser projector, which will allow the theater to stay open, a GoFundMe has been organized to raise the required $28,000.

“It’s been ten years since we first asked you to help us restore the North Park Theatre to its 1920s glory. A key part of that effort involved installing the theater’s first-ever digital projector. At the time, film studios had recently phased out reel-to-reel film distribution. This new projector allowed us to program a wide variety of current and classic releases, all while keeping pace with modern cinemas,” he explains.

There are two options for the theater going forward, he says. A projector similar to what is currently in place could be purchased, and, thanks to a grant already secured by the theater’s management, this could be in place soon.

“But we want to do something different,” Barker continues. “When you come to the North Park, we want you to know you are getting the best technical presentation in Western New York, one that rivals any cinema in the world. To do this, we need a state-of-the-art, 4K laser projector. It is crisper, higher resolution, and at least three times brighter than the one we have now.”

The goal is to continue elevating North Park’s status as a destination movie theater, even if it is just a single screen, as something special and worth seeking out.

“We think combining a cutting-edge technical presentation with the classic North Park experience is the answer—we just need a little more help paying the bill,” he says.

The theater is offering early donors of $150 or more the opportunity to take home their choice of one of the theater’s “rare, theatrical-size movie posters that previously hung in our lobby.”

As a nonprofit organization, all donations to the theater are tax deductible, meaning all donors are also helping cut down their own tax bill.

Within a few days, almost half of the amount needed for the new projector has been pledged, including at least one anonymous donation of $1,000 toward the effort.