John Monaghan and Kevin Maher started Motor City Cinematheque because the venues that used to handle what they cared about were gone.
Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak showed niche, independent, and foreign films for years. The theatre was demolished. The lot now has apartments on it. Cinema Detroit filled a similar role in Midtown. It showed the same category of programming: independent and foreign films you could not catch at a commercial movie theatre. Cinema Detroit still exists, but as a pop-up. Screenings happen when schedule and space allow. There is no permanent home, no predictable calendar.
Both theatres served the same function. They maintained access to a category of film that does not reliably get commercial distribution in most American cities. For Detroit audiences, they were the difference between seeing a foreign or independent film on a proper screen or not seeing it at all. When they stopped operating as fixed institutions, that access point was gone.
Motor City Cinematheque is Monaghan and Maher's practical answer to that. It is a series of art film screenings running over the next several weeks across the metro area, built to support independent, niche, and art films and the theatres that still show them. Monaghan appeared on WDET's The Metro to discuss the upcoming screenings and what they provide for Detroit's film community. The series does not require a permanent building. It requires a calendar and an audience willing to follow it.
That structure is an honest answer to the problem. Demolishing the Main Art did not eliminate the audience it built over years. Converting Cinema Detroit to a pop-up did not dissolve the people who came because of the programming. Motor City Cinematheque is built on the premise that those audiences are still there and that a series is a viable way to keep them engaged while the fixed infrastructure question remains unresolved.
The series does not require a permanent address. It does not pay rent. It is, in that respect, more durable than the institutions whose function it is trying to carry. The Main Art could be bought and torn down. A screening series run by two people committed to the programming is harder to lose.
Detroit has a record of keeping cultural formats alive through transitions that ended fixed institutions. Motor City Cinematheque fits that pattern. Monaghan and Maher are not trying to rebuild what was lost. They are trying to hold the audience together until something more permanent takes shape, or until the portable format proves it is enough.
The audience is the asset worth protecting here. Art theatres build specific audiences. People show up because of the programming. Losing a building does not eliminate that audience; it scatters it. Motor City Cinematheque is a bet that the scatter is temporary.
Monaghan's conversation on The Metro is available on demand through WDET.org, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and NPR.org. The Metro airs weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon on 101.9 FM. Screening venues and dates for Motor City Cinematheque are available through WDET's coverage of the series.
