The Golden Age of Repertory Cinema Is Now

It’s not unusual to see a crowd of cinephiles wrapped around the block at Vidiots, even on a weekday. Since reopening its doors to Los Angeles in 2023, Eagle Rock’s beloved video rental store-turned-retro cinema has become one of the city’s defining repertory hubs — with sold-out screenings and packed sidewalks practically baked into the theater’s curbside appeal. 

But that big group of people you might’ve seen standing around last week? They represent something much larger than just another successful matinee screening of 1999’s “eXistenZ” (although, they were also that!). Flying in from Minneapolis, Portland, Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, New York, Halifax, and beyond, those were the pioneering attendees of the first official Programmers’ Jam: a historic event already shaping the future of moviegoing in North America, precisely because of who’s invited to go.

“We have more access to more restorations than ever before,” said American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) theatrical sales director Bret Berg during his opening remarks. “More places are showing repertory than ever before. There’s a new audience, regardless of age or demographics. We have to use that to our advantage.” 

Heralding what Berg calls The Golden Age of Repertory, the local LA programmer co-organized the Jam with Dan Halsted from Portland’s Hollywood Theatre, and John Moret from Minneapolis’ Trylon Cinema. The trio hosted nearly 100 guests in California from May 6 to 9, across four days of presentations, screenings, and meet-ups — held not only at its flagship Vidiots but also at the Academy Museum, Los Feliz 3, Brain Dead Studios, and Alamo DTLA. 

As varied as the places they live, attendees came from throwback media organizations of all kinds. Tiny nonprofit cinemas, major studios and distributors, popular archival labels, and more forces in repertory programming doggedly working to keep essential art history alive. 

“It’s a conference without the conference,” Halsted told guests. “It’s all the other stuff where we’re hanging out, throwing ideas around, and clinking glasses together. That’s the thing.” 

Inspired by a conversation Halsted, Berg, and Moret had at their favorite LA bar (Boardner’s after the TCM Classic Film Fest, obviously), the inaugural Programmers’ Jam was possibly the largest gathering of repertory film programmers — period. That these professionals are even in contact despite the countless logistical barriers between them is reason enough to celebrate. 

“There are so many problems facing movie theaters right now,” Moret said to Jammers. “And I think they can all be solved by people. Our thought was: get a bunch of people in a room, get drunk, talk about a bunch of stupid things, and I think a lot of good stuff will come of it.”

The 2026 Programmers’ Jam welcomed exhibitors from Universal, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, Sony, Janus Films, Kino Lorber, Rialto Pictures, Milestone, Park Circus, Altered Innocence, Arbelos, Muscle Distribution, and more. Positioned directly in front of the experts most likely to put their restorations and repertory titles in front of an audience, the presenters were met with levels of pop culture and programming knowledge money can’t buy. 

But as Berg pointed out, “All ships rise. This is a new concept I think in the film community, and I found here in LA that everyone is employing that idea and our film scene is better for it.”

Also unlike a traditional trade conference, there was remarkably little ego inside Vidiots. No desperate startup energy. No useless buzzwords or graphs. No vague handwringing about “saving cinema” from executives who’ve never seen a movie in their lives. Instead, the atmosphere at the 2026 Programmers’ Jam was refreshingly practical, as a bunch of truly dedicated cinephiles mulled over the pressing matter of not just putting butts in seats — but making sure each their film communities has affordable, sustainable access to critical art. 

“There’s a real sense of responsibility to try to maintain these things and keep them in front of public eyes,” Moret later told IndieWire. “Because if you don’t, the truth gets lost.”

Confronting that problem is more complicated than you might think. In the same conversation with IndieWire, Berg discussed the growing desire for a centralized rights database that could help programmers track down theatrical licensing information without having to put on their “’Columbo’ hats.” Moret also emphasized the pressing need to solve various existential issues facing the future of film projection itself. That’s an emerging crisis as older projection systems age out and replacement parts become harder to find. Plus, younger cinephiles may struggle to secure mentors who can actually train them on analog equipment. 

That collaborative spirit hovered over nearly every conversation at the 2026 Programmers’ Jam. Between presentations and screenings, guests traded stories about audience building, restoration access, repertory trends, and the strange balancing act of serving hyper-local communities while simultaneously participating in a much larger film ecosystem. 

At another point in his opening remarks, Moret described repertory programmers as “empathizers” and “guardians of our artistic and cultural heritage,” effectively framing revival theaters not merely as entertainment venues but as institutions capable of preserving historical memory at a moment when algorithmic recommendations increasingly flatten life. 

That idea resonated particularly strongly at Vidiots. That venue’s very existence serves as proof that communities will fight to preserve the spaces they genuinely love, and welcoming the crowd, Vidiots executive director Maggie Mackay described the theater as “a miracle” — one that only survived because a massive network of supporters refused to let it disappear.

“There were times in the old space in Santa Monica where Bret would come and sit with our founders, Patty and Kathy, and I would just try not to weep because it was so dire,” she said. “The legacy of that video store, the beating heart of this organization, was going to go away.”

Now, instead of vanishing, Vidiots has become a cornerstone of modern repertory culture. More importantly, it’s doing so at a time when audiences are increasingly hungry for connection. Berg partially credits that shift to what he jokingly calls “the Letterboxd effect,” as the gamification of movie discovery ironically steers the most committed users offline. He also argued that repertory’s growth is tied to broader changes in how audiences engage with theaters overall.

As streaming continues to fragment audience attention and studios release fewer mid-budget films theatrically, repertory cinemas have quietly evolved into some of the most reliable and warm curatorial spaces in the industry. Not just because they show older films, but because they provide context, intentionality, and social opportunities in ways other entertainment businesses fundamentally cannot.

For all Hollywood’s talk of exhibition strategy and preservation infrastructure, the actual connective tissue of repertory culture still seems to come down to trust — trusting programmers to challenge audiences thoughtfully, trusting local communities to support difficult artistic work, and trusting humanity to believe that moviegoing remains a worthwhile collective experience.

“I don’t think good programmers are dishonest people,” Moret told IndieWire. “You have to truly be into what you actually love and actually care about your audience. To create an audience means that you have to earn their trust.”

At the 2026 Programmers’ Jam, it was clear Moret, Berg, Halsted, and the Vidiots crew knew exactly how to make everyone feel at home. One moment programmers were preaching the gospel of physical print inspections. The next, they were losing their minds over announcements like Warner Bros.’ long-awaited restoration plans for Ken Russell’s “The Devils.” 

The work of film programming orbits nostalgia by nature. But the 2026 Programmers’ Jam felt remarkably forward-looking. Spilling back onto Eagle Rock Boulevard, it was hard to believe the “beta test” version of this event from last year could ever fit inside Vidiots’ microcinema. Now, its three organizers are already talking about how to expand into 2027 and beyond.