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Pencils are moving. Plans are being drawn.

Big gratitude to our very good friends @la_n_d for joining us on this wild ride.

More soon ✨

A feed tells you what to think. A theater gives you time and space to figure it out.

Three hundred people sat in this room, watched the same film, and walked out with three hundred different conclusions. No algorithm sorted it for them. No invisible hand tilted the scales toward what they already believed.

Just a story, a dark room, and the audacious, beautiful expectation that you would realize the meaning on your own. That an audience could sit with discomfort and come out the other side with empathy. That a stranger’s vision could rearrange something inside the common psyche without asking permission.

Then the lights came up and the conversation moved to the bar next door. Cafes filled with chatter and discourse, dueling perspectives over poured whiskey and hot coffee. And there was room and respect for every truth and epiphany that each person carried out of that dimly lit theater.

That’s not just entertainment. That’s democracy. Our oldest tradition.

Movie Palaces across the country held this space for almost a century. 

We look forward to holding it close once again.

📸 Thank you to @marfamuseum for their wonderful archive

Lookin’ forward to dressing up the walls ✨

💙 fabulous cyanotype from @skycraftprinting

What do you hope to see at The Palace?! ✨🎞️

📸 Thank you to @marfamuseum for their beautiful caretaking and curation of Presidio County history

People have been asking what The Palace becomes.

A single-screen art house cinema. Eighty seats of curated independent, international, repertory, and regional programming. A room built for the kind of film that changes the drive home.

A bar, lounge, and retail space to welcome you in whether or not a film is screening.Come for a movie, come for a drink, come because the door is open.

A production soundstage and event space. Two thousand square feet with twenty-foot ceilings, and drive-on access.

A post-production suite for professional editorial and finishing. A fully equipped facility for filmmakers from anywhere who need space and silence to push a project over the finish line.

Short-term accommodations for visiting artists, filmmakers, and crews. A filmmaker-in-residence program.

Film Festivals. A destination event that draws filmmakers and audiences from around the world to the best single screen in Far West Texas.

And a dedication to the community this building has always belonged to. Filmmaking education and workshops for local students and families. A regional high school film competition. Grant programs to support independent filmmakers working in the region. And partnership with the foundations and nonprofits already doing extraordinary work in this town.

If you’re a filmmaker, distributor, programmer, educator, foundation, Big Bend local, future visitor or simply someone who believes a town of 1,700 deserves all of this, we want to hear from you.

📷 Thank you to the incomparable @bryanschutmaat for sharing his talents with us.

1905. Still here.

This cornerstone reads Town Hall because that’s what The Palacefirst was.

Grand ballroom and country dances. Concerts. Recitals. Revivals. Stereopticon shows. Graduations. Stock market reports. Lectures. Bingo. Escapism from Depression era worries and World War.

A place for everyone and everything.

The actual city hall came later, built next door in the 1940s and burned down in 1995.

The Palace has been here since 1905. It’s not going anywhere. Now let’s give it something to show. ✨

The Palace has been an anchor and a draw for so many creatives, inspiring phenomenal interpretations and photos of its wonderful facade.

We love this beautiful work from @kaloolajaystudio

If you have a photo or painting or sketch or visual of The Palace we would love to see and share! ✨

Thanks for the warm welcome.

Seems like half the town showed up, and a whole lot of you from far and wide.

Excited to build something big with y’all ✨

The Palace in Marfa, Texas opened in 1905 as the town’s opera house and the only theater between El Paso and San Antonio. In the 1930s it suffered a fire and was revived as an Art Deco Picture Palace. It has survived world wars, segregation, and forty years of silence. And now, it has held its breath long enough.

We are here to reopen The Palace for the people.

Cinema is resistance. It is the place where differences sit together in the dark and discover something shared. Where a foreign language needs no translator because the image does the work. Where a community sees itself reflected and a visitor carries something home she will never quite shake. Where a rancher and a tourist leave changed by the same light.

Film is communal. It is confrontational. It is not content. And it deserves a room worthy of what it asks of us.

Art house cinema. Production studio. Bar. A home for the stories the West actually holds, not just the ones it gets sold. We will need your help.

• Follow @palacemarfa

• Sign up for the newsletter (link in bio)

• Share this with every person you know who still walks into a dark room ready for revival.

A cinema only lives when the house is full.
Welcome back to The Palace.