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UPDATE: This story was updated at 3:22 p.m. EST on Wednesday, April 1, 2026.

On Emery Road in Fulton, an old farmer by the name of Woodward Emery built a house. In 1995, the father of Syracuse University alum Sam Johnston bought that house — where Johnston would grow up. Eventually, the place and its history would become the namesake of his film club, Emery Cinema.

“It’s a nod to the house I initially grew up in a little outside of Syracuse and (the logo) is a painted picture of the house done by a family friend years ago,” Johnston said.

Emery Cinema is a central New York cinema club, screening movies in analog film formats like 35 mm or 8 mm. Co-owners Johnston and Pranathi Adhikari wanted to build a community around film through screening movies the old school way. Emery Cinema, which was launched in January, does not have a set location, but screens its events at local spaces. They held their first screening Saturday.

Johnston graduated in 2024 from Newhouse School of Public Communications and moved to New York City after graduation. There, he worked as a freelance production assistant. In this role, he said he took in the world of film production.

“I learned in going to the city how much broader independent programming is, and it’s something that I wanted to bring back to Syracuse,” Johnston said.

Adhikari and Johnston are both Syracuse natives and met years ago in high school. Adhikari went on to graduate from Cornell University in 2023 and lived in North Carolina for the last year and a half. But, when she heard that Johnston wanted to start a cinema club back in Syracuse, she said she was eager to get involved.

“I didn’t grow up really seeing film on 35 mm or any other physical formats. Through my experiences since moving out of Syracuse, I really thought that was a need that needed to be addressed,” Adhikari said.

Screening films in their original formats is important to the co-owners. It’s especially relevant for older films because that was how directors intended their movies to be seen, Johnston said. Movies that were originally created on film offer visual texture and aspect ratio that digital usually cannot replicate.

“It’s visually the most accurate way to watch something, but it’s also kind of a lost art. It’s a very interesting visual experience to see something blown up the way it was supposed to be seen and the colors and everything, it just doesn’t really compare to digital,” Johnston said.

Watching in the original format also encourages people to embrace slowness, especially in a time when anyone can access films quickly through streaming, Adhikari said.

“You can also build community around it through people who are actively seeking that culture,” Adhikari said. “It respects the craft to be able to show films that are shot in analog format the way they were intended to be seen.”

Emery Cinema’s first film screening showed Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” The event was hosted in the back of Megaton Games, a local video game and event space.

Megaton Games is co-owned by Alex Silver, a relative of Johnston. Silver said he’s always wanted to foster a sense of community in his store. Screening the movie, which happens to be Silver’s favorite, helped him broaden the appeal of his space, he said.

The screening gained more attraction than the co-owners could have imagined, Johnston said. The back room is about 500 square feet. Fifty people squeezed in to watch the movie together.

Adhikari and Johnston set up the event using what they had on hand, Adhikari said. Johnston said that it was a very “makeshift” operation. To screen movies in a film format, a public performance license is required, and anyone can obtain film reels through eBay and avid collectors, Johnston said.

“We set up a DIY projection booth by stacking banker boxes together and taping them and making sure we wouldn’t accidentally lose our projector,” Adhikari said.

To screen an analog film, Emery Cinema co-creators Sam Johnston and Pranathi Adhikari stacked and taped banker boxes together so they wouldn’t lose their projector. Emery Cinema screened Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” on Saturday. Courtesy of Sam Johnston

Their first screening supported the Syracuse Immigrant Refugee Defense Network. Emery Cinema did not charge for the “Dr. Strangelove” screening, but encouraged attendees to support the cause through donations. They raised $420 from the event, Johnston said.

Supporting SIRDN meant a lot to Silver, he said. It was a way he could contribute while also operating his business.

Silver added that he noticed a crossover between films and games, so it made sense for Megaton Games to host this event. He recalled a restaurant from years ago, the Spaghetti Warehouse, which also hosted movie screenings and even had a group called the “Syracuse Cinephile Society.”

“The restaurant closed so they’re not really doing it anymore, but the fact that stuff like that is going to be coming back, I’m obsessed with the idea,” Silver said.

Emery Cinema also has a public Letterboxd and newsletter that film fans can sign up for. Adhikari said the goal of having the newsletter is to reach people beyond Instagram so anyone can keep up with upcoming screenings, even if they’re not on social media.

On May 1, Emery Cinema will hold its second screening, showing “The Simpsons Movie” at the Palace Theatre. Johnston said they try to tie in something old, like analog formats, with newer releases.

“I realized I want this to exist not only as a way for people to see films, but also how we can support local communities in every single program we do,” Johnston said.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that both Sam Johnston and Pranathi Adhikari met at Jamesville-Dewitt High School. Sam Johnston went to Christan Brothers Academy and the two met through mutual friends.

Published on March 31, 2026 at 10:10 pm
Contact Alex: arice19@syr.edu