The State Theatre and the Film Festival
Near Traverse City, Michigan
On Front Street downtown glows the marquee of the State Theatre, a nineteen forty-nine movie palace that had gone dark and looked destined for the wrecking ball. It opened on the thirtieth of June, nineteen forty-nine, on the site of an earlier theater called the Lyric. It was split into two screens in nineteen seventy-eight and closed in nineteen ninety-six.
Its rescue came from an unlikely local. The Oscar-winning documentary maker Michael Moore, known for provocative films like Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, and Fahrenheit Nine Eleven, lives in the Traverse City area. In two thousand five he teamed up with the author Doug Stanton and the photographer John Robert Williams to launch the Traverse City Film Festival, with a mission to show great movies.
The first festival ran over five days that July, showing independent and classic films in venues around downtown, including the State Theatre. The nonprofit festival later took over and restored the old theater, turning it into a beloved year-round cinema. Renovations finished in two thousand seven, and the ceiling is now a fiber-optic sky of stars, designed by the Northwestern Michigan College astronomy professor Jerry Dobek to show the view from Traverse City on a clear August night.
The festival grew into one of the most respected in the Midwest before it went on hiatus, but the restored State still lights up Front Street every night.
