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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Cash-Carter documentary a sellout at Kiggins; more shows added

By , Columbian staff writer
Published:
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June Carter and Johnny Cash
June Carter and Johnny Cash Photo Gallery

Everybody claims to love the historic Kiggins Theatre, but not so many actually show up and patronize the place. Sparse attendance has kept owner Dan Wyatt worried for the future of the old-fashioned movie palace ever since he bought and remodeled it almost four years ago.

This past Saturday night, however, the Kiggins set the sort of record that Wyatt dreams about: a sellout. Folks showing up at 7 p.m. for a 7:30 movie screening found a long line on the sidewalk and an apologetic Richard Beer, Wyatt’s programming and marketing director, announcing that every available seat was already gone.

The place was swamped for a special event: the local premiere of a documentary by Vancouver resident Beth Harrington called “The Winding Stream: The Carters, The Cashes and the Course of Country Music.” There was live music beforehand and a question-and-answer session afterward with filmmaker Harrington, who had great access to the extended Carter-Cash family but struggled for years to pull together the financing to get her film made and legally licensed (since it’s full of copyrighted material).

The Columbian pitched in, too, with a feature story about Harrington and the premiere a week earlier, which you can read about at bit.ly/CountryKiggins.

If You Go

• What: Additional screenings of “The Winding Stream.”

• When: 6:30 p.m. Friday, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. *Sunday, 7:30 p.m. *Monday and 5:30 p.m. *Tuesday. (*Filmmaker Beth Harrington will be on hand for Q&A after the screening.)

• Where: Kiggins Theatre, 1011 Main St., Vancouver.

• Cost: $7 before 6 p.m., $8 after 6 p.m.

• Information:www.kigginstheatre.net/movies/the-winding-stream and thewindingstream.com

All of that added up to the kind of special Vancouver evening that no one wanted to miss. Tickets for most screenings at the Kiggins are $7, but even when priced for this event at $10 a pop, all 342 seats in the auditorium sold out quickly. (The theater originally held 712, by the way, but that was back when “butts and legs were smaller,” Beer said.)

The rare free event does fill up the Kiggins, Beer said in an email, but selling out a ticketed event like this was “unprecedented. It was a roaring success all around!”

More screenings

Beers didn’t only bear disappointing news on the sidewalk on Saturday. He announced that additional screenings of “The Winding Stream” would be added for this weekend and early next week. Harrington herself will be on hand for audience Q&A after the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday screenings.

All screenings will be $1 more than the Kiggins’ standard ticket price, “but we think this is a premium show,” Beer said.

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