Brian and Lauren Whitney blew into Kingston from Chicago five years ago, loved the place and wondered how come this cool, hip, smart burg lacked an art house cinema when neighboring villes like Saugerties and Woodstock and even miniscule Rosendale did.

Now, one year on, in the true DIY spirit and working the pop-up route, the Whitneys and five friends compose the board of directors of the non-profit Kingston Film Foundation, screening classic, independent and avant-garde film throughout the city and, on occasion beyond. They can look back on a rousing debut — twice the number of originally planned screenings, welcoming venues and an initial trickle of grants funding.

“Right now we have kind of a funky structure,” Brian Whitney told Kingston Wire in a phone interview. “The seven of us who are the board also kind of do everything from run the concession stand at our events up to, you know, making the decisions on how to proceed on everything. So we kind of learned, we've been learning on the fly.”

Kingston's Headstone Gallery has been KFF's chief location, the Coxsackie Drive-In twice a summer venue. Last week saw the year's final show, a screening of the country music rarity “Heartworn Highways” to a packed house at Kingston's Tubby's. This year promises, if all goes well, a fixed home for KFF, the city's first fully functioning movie house of any sort in decades.

“I originally grew up in New Jersey,” Whitney told us. “I was always the kind of kid who would take the train into the city to go see repertory cinema. little indie theaters like Film Forum And then, living in Chicago, to the Music Box, where I remember a 70 millimeter print of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which they would show like every six months. And I went every time.”

Whitney's first local job made a good fit for his interests, working at UPAC, in the box office at first then in a variety of technical and programming functions around that institution's post-pandemic free film series. He left that to focus on KFF and full-time parenting while wife Lauren brings home the bacon from her job at Ulster BOCES helping disabled students transition to adult life.

The location of KFF's permanent home is uncertain, though a Foxhall Avenue location is in the mix. “The sale of that building has not gone through yet,” Whitney said. “But potentially there is a space that would have some space for us to rent in it. ... There's a there's a potential collaboration with another arts organization in a different space too. That might happen a little bit sooner, but until the T's and the I's are crossed and dotted, it would be hard for me to go on record about any of that stuff.”

“Part of the reason there isn't this kind of theater space here already is that there's not a lot of vacant commercial buildings with high ceilings waiting for a company to move in, essentially. So it basically would require something that's either like a new build or something that can be renovated pretty extensively. I'm optimistic about the space that we've been looking at because we have such good partners. ... The one thing I can say for sure is that we will show more movies in 2025 than we did in 2024.”

You can sign up for Kingston Film Foundation's Popcorn Club for $10 a year and get free popcorn at all screenings. Www.kingstonfilmfoundation.org. Next screening is Sunday, Jan. 19 at Unicorn Bar featuring the neo-noir erotic thriller “Bound,” the trans women Wachowski sisters’ directorial debut.