Community members in their finest attire flocked to Images Cinema last Sunday, filling all 150 seats in the theater for its Red Carpet Party. The sold-out annual fundraiser gathered film buffs from the College and Town communities to watch this year’s live broadcast of the 96th Academy Awards.
“The Red Carpet Party is a tradition going back almost as long as Images Cinema has been a nonprofit, as one of our only real fundraising type events that we do during the year,” Images Executive Director Dan Hudson told the Record in an interview.
However, this year’s event, which was the first large-scale revival of the tradition after the COVID-19 pandemic, differed slightly from previous iterations.
“There’s been a suggested donation in the past, but this year is our first year that we actually have a ticket price,” Hudson said. “So we’re taking smaller steps to maybe eventually have more of a full-fledged gala — like a lot of nonprofit [cinemas] have — in the future.”
Hudson said he hoped the gala would still be accessible. Tickets, which were only sold in advance and included the price of food, cost $25 for the public and $15 for students. “[We wanted to] keep the price really affordable and accessible for most folks in our community, including having a discounted student price,” he said.
Funds raised at the event will support general operations at Images, but the focus of the event is celebrating this year’s accomplishments at Images, Hudson said. “There’s been a lot of exciting progress and changes at the theater in the last year, so this is our opportunity — the one big public celebration that we have each year specifically supporting Images,” he said. “But, yeah, it’s not a huge moneymaker for us.”
Hudson also said that Images staff were excited to preview the cinema’s newly-designed space at the front of the store, which will be used for social events, screenings, and pre-show refreshments beginning in the next two months. “This will be the first time that the community is invited into the space that we’re developing in our storefront,” he said.
Like the Oscars in Los Angeles, the event began with a red carpet, which lined the floor of the new space. Interviews with attendees about their outfits and expectations for the night were conducted by Darlie Kerns ’24 and Anne Kennedy, museum shop manager at the Williams College Museum of Art. Guests filing into the theater were treated to pizza from the newly-opened Crust, prosecco, and other refreshments.
Event organizers asked Kerns — whose mother used to host events at Images — to continue that legacy and co-host this year’s red carpet.
Looking back, Kerns said she enjoyed her time on the red carpet. “I say I have a few skills in this life, but one of my top skills is [that] I can really engage and laugh with [older] people,” Kerns joked. “I really felt like I was in my element.”
Attendees watched the broadcast on the big screen once it began at 7 p.m. During commercial breaks, three emcees — Hudson and father-daughter comedy duo Sam and Maggie Crane, who developed their comedic craft as a professor of political science at the College and a stand-up comedian, respectively — interacted with the audience.
“The idea is to pop up, engage the audience, [and] make it something a little different than just sitting in a theater or watching a television show,” Sam Crane told the Record.
Hudson emphasized the unpredictability of a live broadcast — for instance, 2017’s iconic La La Land–Moonlight mix up — as opposed to standard movie screenings. “Having the opportunity to react organically can be really fun and surprising,” he said. “Normally, when we’re showing a movie, we’ve seen the movie before it shows here at Images, so we’re not surprised. But for a live broadcast … that could be interesting.”
“One of our core values is the sense of intergenerationality, bringing a multiplicity of people together,” Hudson said. “So we’re really excited that we’re going to have a significant group of both Williams and [Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts] students that love film coming to this event, in addition to some of our longtime members and donors, and other community members. I think it’ll be an exciting and dynamic group of people that are united in their love of film.”
Aleah Seamster, a student at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, reflected that sentiment. “I think [Images is] so intimate,” she said. “I’m used to theaters being kind of big. This little Oscar[s] viewing that brings the community together is really cute.”
The event also foregrounded the importance of Images to the local communities. “Images is a legendary, iconic business in Williamstown, and Spring Street would never be the same without it,” Town resident Leslie Milton said.
“[It] is a pretty remarkable little place and an independent cinema — there aren’t that many of them left,” Sam Crane said. “It’s been continuously running as such for over 100 years now, which is insane.”
