Capri Theatre

On East Fairview Avenue in Montgomery’s Garden District, the Capri Theatre bills itself as the city’s only independent movie theatre, and the marquee out front has been a neighborhood fixture since the building first opened as the Clover Theatre in July 1941. That makes it Alabama’s longest continuously operating movie theatre, a run interrupted only by a mid century remodel that gave the building its Capri name in December 1962.

The theatre’s survival owes largely to the Capri Community Film Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that took over management in 1983 and purchased the building outright in 2010, saving it from the fate of most single screen theatres of its era. The Society completed a digital projection conversion in 2013 to keep the Capri technically current, and a comprehensive renovation around the theatre’s seventy fifth anniversary culminated in a new marquee unveiled in 2025, a visible sign of the volunteer driven investment that keeps the building running.

Programming leans toward exactly the kind of films a chain multiplex rarely shows: independent releases, foreign language films, documentaries, and classic revivals shown on the theatre’s two hundred seat screen. Regular showtimes run Friday through Monday at 4 and 7 p.m., with additional special screenings, director talks, and themed series added throughout the year, including a long running Classic Film Class held on Wednesday evenings each fall. Recent programming has paired restored classics with introductions from film historians, giving the Capri a rotating identity somewhere between a neighborhood theatre and a repertory cinema.

Tickets run ten dollars for Society members and twelve dollars for non-members, with a four dollar rate for children under twelve, and a ten pack of tickets can be purchased for ninety dollars for regular moviegoers. Beer and wine are sold at the concession stand, a detail that sets the Capri apart from most family oriented theatre chains and signals the adult leaning, independent programming the theatre tends to favor.

Because the Capri operates as a nonprofit rather than a commercial chain, membership dollars and ticket sales go directly back into building upkeep and film licensing rather than to a corporate parent, and the Society periodically runs fundraising campaigns tied to specific renovation projects. The Garden District setting, walkable from several of Montgomery’s older residential neighborhoods, also makes the Capri a fixture for locals rather than strictly a tourist stop, and its calendar of classic and independent film screenings gives Montgomery something a national theatre chain would never program.

For visitors looking for an evening out that isn’t a museum or a historic site, the Capri offers a low key alternative: a nearly century old single screen theatre still running the way its earliest owners intended, just with a digital projector and a stocked beer cooler.

The theatre’s programming committee, made up largely of Society volunteers and local film enthusiasts, chooses each month’s lineup with an eye toward variety, mixing new independent releases still on their initial run with older classics that rarely get a big screen showing anymore outside of a dedicated repertory house. That mix means regulars can catch a recent festival favorite one weekend and a decades old restored print the next, something a standard commercial theatre chain rarely attempts.

Because the building itself dates to 1941, the Capri’s architecture is part of the draw for many visitors, from its restored marquee to the original bones of the auditorium beneath newer seating and sound upgrades. The Society has been careful to balance modernization, like the 2013 digital conversion, with preserving details that tie the building back to its Clover Theatre origins, and longtime Montgomery residents often describe the Capri as one of the few downtown era buildings still doing exactly what it was originally built to do.