4:46 After more than a year, people are buying tickets and popcorn at The Guild Cinema in Albuquerque. Owner Keif Henley scrambled to re-open when the state revamped its color-coded risk system recently. Bernalillo County was suddenly in the least restrictive turquoise phase.
He’s still limited to 33% capacity - or just 36 people – in the single-screen theater.
“Some businesses can t reopen it at 25% or even 33%,” Henley says. “Their overhead is too much. We can limp along.”
With virus restrictions easing around New Mexico, movie theaters are beginning to open again. Many smaller independent movie houses managed to stay afloat during the pandemic, but they may look different moving forward.