A Visit to Alaska’s Gold Town Nickelodeon

Throughout the country, independent art-house cinemas are essential hubs for moviegoing culture, fostering community through programming that engages with film history. In this exclusive series on the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck, we travel across America and bring back brief documentary portraits of different local art houses, both in major cities and in small towns, along with a selection of films handpicked by their programmers. The series began last year with a celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of New York’s Walter Reade Theater, and it continues this month with a visit to Juneau, Alaska. While we were there, intrepid programmer Collette Costa gave us a tour of the Gold Town Nickelodeon, a downtown art house she has turned into a haven for year-round locals living in this transient town, which is both a top cruise-ship destination and the only state capital unreachable by road. Get an intimate look at the theater in the video above, then head to the Channel for a series of eight films (including Insomnia, Babette’s Feast, and Nanook of the North) that evoke what it feels like to live in Alaska without having been made there.