The Belcourt Theatre Celebrates 100 years
- Abby Thomas
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
For the past 100 years, the Belcourt Theatre has stood proudly in the heart of Hillsboro Village here in Nashville, TN.
What makes the Belcourt so special is their commitment to giving back to the community and showing movies the way they were made to be shown.
Stephanie Silverman, the executive director of the Belcourt Theatre, has served in this role for 19 years, managing the institution's stability, working with the board of directors, since they’re a non-profit, and making financial decisions.
She has a team of film programmers, led by Toby Leonard, that curate the films each month as well as an education staff that create education and engagement activities for the community.
When asked what their mission statement was, Silverman said “The Belcourt is here to bring great films to this community… It's to provide a vibrant space to find great education programs, and really, to be a hub for film lovers, film goers and community.”
Silverman made a point to strike down the notion that movie theaters are becoming obsolete. “I think we are about to see a really exciting moment for film exhibition in general,” Silverman said. “And they'll still say it's about to die, but it's just not. We all have kitchens, and restaurants still exist.”
As a nonprofit, the Belcourt has a leg up from major movie theater chains like AMC or Regal, because they have more freedom to do whatever they want.
The Belcourt draws a lot of their audience from themed film series’ like “Music City Mondays,” where they show a music-related film each Monday, or “Shocktober,” they’re Halloween/horror series featuring films like Sinners, American Psycho and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or an entire week dedicated to one director.
Leonard and his team are not bound to show every blockbuster; they can be picky about what they show.
“The reason that the Belcourt is a nonprofit, and why that's one of the keys to our success, I would say, is that it allows us to really program from the film first,” Silverman said. “If we were completely relying on the box office to get us through, to pay all the bills, to support our education programming, to do all the important work that we want to do, we would program differently.”
The Belcourt focuses on what the audiences want to see, not just what the flashiest titles are at any given season of film.
“[Commerical theaters] kind of have to work from a corporate structure down,” Silverman said. “We are on the ground in the city that we live and work in, so we are very much about audience up.”
“We also have spent so much time developing audiences for classic films, for repertory films, we are not as vulnerable to the swings of a particular season's box office as our commercial counterparts are,” Silverman said.
The Belcourt showcases a mix of new releases as well as classic and indie films. Something that Silverman emphasized was their use of showing a film in 35mm format.
“We're one of the only theaters in the southeast who still does that,” Silverman said. “So a lot of times we get to do that, when filmmakers have chosen to make film prints, we're the home for those, which is a really cool position to be in.”
Back in 1925, when the theatre first opened it was built to be a multi-use space and housed a lot of community theater.
The one stage back then is now still used for showing movies, and it’s appropriately named the 1925 Hall.
They added a second theatre in 1966, the 1966 Hall, and then renovated to add a new classroom and screening room in 2016.
“It has been a truly community supported space in so many of those iterations,” Silverman said.
Interestingly enough, the 1925 Hall stage was used as the stage of the Grand Ole Opry from 1934 to 1936.
“We just have very deep roots in the cultural life of Nashville and there aren't a lot of neighborhood theatres nationwide that are left,” Silverman said. “And so we're very lucky that at the points when we were in peril, and there were those points for sure, the community stepped up and saw value, and it's protecting us.”
The Belcourt relies on the community’s overall support and memberships to keep their unique programs up and running.
In addition to regular film screenings, the Belcourt also hosts Q&As with filmmakers and artists, and meet and greets from time to time. The Belcourt has seen the likes of Timothee Chalamet, Nicole Kidman and the band Anvil.
Not only does the theatre mean a lot to the surrounding community, but it also means a lot to Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, who before his run as mayor, was on the Belcourt’s board of directors.
“He's a big movie guy, so it is fun to have a film geek as a mayor,” Silverman said.
On September 5, O’Connell helped present the theatre with a Tennessee Historical Commission plaque to honor the 100th anniversary.
Beginning with their plague reveal, the Belcourt Theatre will be celebrating their 100 years for a few months with various special screenings and seminars.
“So there'll be a seminar every few months, they're kind of quarterly, that's taking a deeper dive again, into the connection between Nashville and the movie business,” Silverman said,
“So one of the things that we're rolling out that'll keep coming out through spring of 2026, are some deeper dives on Saturday morning into the history of Nashville and the Belcourt and the film community,” Silverman said.
On top of their events for the community, there have also been exhibits popping up throughout the building to honor certain parts of the history and they’ve also been taking the time to collect stories to create an oral history of the theatre.
Looking towards the future, Silverman feels excited and hopeful for what the Belcourt has in store.
“We want people to have just a top notch cinema experience when they come here,” Silverman said.
She stressed the importance they place on showing a film exactly as it is meant to be shown:
“So we are constantly investing in technology, and we just, last year, put two new projectors in so that we are getting to take advantage of the new laser technology,” Silverman said. “We want to make sure that our digital projection is the best in Nashville, at the same time that we are maintaining our 35 millimeter film technology training projectionists, making sure that every single movie that you watch is is set to the perfect sound level, that the picture is the best, that if the director of that film walked in at any minute, they would be thrilled with what their film looked like.”
“We will keep trying to be the very best version of whatever it is that we want to be as we go forward,” Silverman said.
Silverman encourages readers to go back to the movies.
“I just say to the world out there, and certainly to the Belmont community, if you haven't been to a movie in a while, come back,” Silverman said. “It is unique to itself.., It's a really wonderful gift to give yourself.”
This article was written by Abby Thomas