GREENFIELD — With the showing of the 1984 classic “Red Dawn” being a fundraising success for the Garden Cinemas’ Ukraine donation drive, the Main Street theater is continuing the initiative with a showing of a Ukrainian film next week.
Beginning Sunday, March 20, and continuing on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m., patrons can see “The Guide,” a 2014 Ukrainian film that was chosen by the country as its entry for the Oscars’ Best Foreign Language Film category. Tickets for the screenings are available for a $10 minimum donation and 100% of proceeds will go to World Central Kitchen, an international nonprofit that provides meals for people living through natural disasters and humanitarian crises.
The film is set in the mid-1930s in a Soviet-controlled Ukraine and follows the story of an American boy named Peter who, soon after the death of his father, befriends a blind minstrel named Ivan Kocherga.
“It is a beautiful film,” said Garden Cinemas co-owner Issac Mass. “It’s sort of this charming story during a period of war and tumult.”
Mass said “The Guide” is a “little more artsy” than 2019’s Best Picture nominee “Jojo Rabbit,” but is in the similar vein of being a serious drama with light moments.
The showings of “Red Dawn” and “The Guide” are part of different national movements across the country by movie theaters holding special showings to raise money for Ukrainian refugee relief. For “Red Dawn,” the Garden Cinemas partnered with distributor Park Circus, while Falling Forward Entertainment is leading the charge for “The Guide.”
For “The Guide,” however, Mass said all licensing and distribution fees have been waived, which means the theater is able to raise money at no cost to itself — although he noted he was more than happy to “eat” the licensing fees for “Red Dawn” in the name of charity.
Mass said the screenings of “Red Dawn” have been wildly successful.
“We’ve raised a significant amount of money,” Mass said, noting the theater has raised “thousands of dollars in ticket sales” and has yet to run the numbers on cash donations made at the box office.
He added “Red Dawn” has been the Garden Cinemas’ most successful single-screen showing over the past week, with only “The Batman,” which is being shown on multiple screens, performing better.
“People are very, very receptive to it,” he said. “A lot of people are coming out.”
For Mass, the donation drive is two-fold — he feels a special connection to Ukraine through his service abroad in Bosnia-Herzegovina and it is a chance to expose the community to Ukrainian art.
“In 2001, when I was in Bosnia, I served with a lot of people from Ukraine,” Mass said, noting he had been stationed there as a part of NATO’s Multinational Division North. “In some ways, I feel very connected with the people who were fighting there.”
As for sharing the cultural connection, Mass said taking in art from Ukraine can connect people to the besieged country they’ve been seeing on their TVs and newspapers over the last few weeks.
“We wanted the public in western Massachusetts to see that the Ukraine really does have an independent culture and independent national identity,” Mass said. “Through art, we can recognize they really do have their own culture, and while there’s a history that involves the Soviet Union, they are independent and have their own identity.”
And while people in Greenfield can only do so much to help those in Ukraine, Mass said this is one way locals can contribute.
“It’s an unparalleled sort of human tragedy,” Mass said of the ongoing war, “and we wanted to do what little bit we could do from the United States.”
Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com or 413-930-4081.