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Midnite Movie Mamacita is a household name around these parts, and she’s hoping her award-winning work translates into overflow crowds when she opens her very own cinema house.
“Finally, after five years of programming [and] doing events at other people’s locations, I’m finally making the step to create my own cinema,” she says.
Andrea Beesley-Brown (the Mamacita’s real name) recently left her programming post at Tempe’s Madcap Theaters out of her own volition to try and live the dream as a repertory movie house owner.
Before Madcap, which used to house the old Harkins Centerpoint 11, Beesley-Brown brought underground indie flicks, cult classics, and on-purpose stink bombs to the defunct Paper Heart Gallery and Chandler Cinemas.
In all, she’s been instrumental in giving the Valley a sorely needed repertory film scene for the past five years — a scene, by the way, that will be bolstered by the scheduled opening of downtown Phoenix’s FilmBar.
Though Beesley-Brown hasn’t nailed down a location for her new endeavor, she and her business partner Mike Heenan are hard at work on creating a one- or two-screen cinema.
In the meantime, she’s renting out a space at Madcap and putting on events at Casa Grande’s BlackBox Theatre, where she’ll present The Being on January 8. (For more about the screening, which will include live on-screen text comments from filmgoers, click here.)
