BELFAST — Colonial Theatre in Downtown Belfast will reopen for its first movie screenings of 2023 in the evening on Friday, Nov. 17. The following afternoon, the theatre plays host to a Re-Open House Celebration on Saturday, Nov. 18, from 2 - 4 p.m.

After a two o’clock Saturday Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony, cinema doors will be thrown open to the community for a no-cost Open House focusing on the past, present, and projected vibrant future of the Colonial Theatre.

There will be free popcorn and soda, giveaways, prizes and activities for the kids.

“This is a great time to meet the board members and executive director of the Hawthorne Theatre and Arts Collaborative,” said The Colonial, in a news release.

For those who have been before: there will be a booth in the upper lobby to record stories of your favorite memories at the Colonial. Below, you can capture new ones with the theatre’s iconic ‘Baby Hawthorne’ elephant statue. All three screens will run short films that celebrate the entire longer-than-a-century lifetime of the cinema.

After an October purchase by a Belfast-based not-for-profit: the Colonial welcomes the community back to the Theatre for the first time in fourteen months

“From the middle of November onward is all about inviting Waldo County back into the Colonial,” said Hawthorne Board President Alice Seeger. “We want to take this as an opportunity to say hello, let people know what the Collaborative is trying to do, and turn the enthusiasm we’ve seen on the streets into concrete support for the theatre and its fifty-thousand-dollar [matching] Operating Funds Drive.”

Feature film operations begin both Friday and Saturday evenings with the first new Hunger Games movie in many years, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, an already-lauded biopic directed by Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter, Sophia, about Elvis’s oft-overlooked wife, Priscilla, and an on-the-nose Maine Premiere of an indie gem about trying to reopen a community theater during a latter stage of a pandemic, Re-Opening.

For more details on the debut schedule, visit the website early next week at colonialtheatre.com.

About the Colonial Theatre

‘The Colonial’ is a locally owned & operated not-for profit triplex cinema & performance center on High Street in Downtown Belfast. Unforgettable Fact: its opening night in 1912 was the same one that the Titanic set sail. Known worldwide for its brightly painted art deco façade and life-sized elephant on the roof, the Colonial Theatre is the State of Maine’s oldest, and possibly most-storied, movie theater.