🎬 Behind the Screens:

For a long time, you couldn’t tell it by our website, but Ana and I are both web developers. www.century.theater, and now www.fortkentcinema.com, was always our last priority. It was very much a “cobbler’s kids have no shoes” situation.

But recently, I’ve been able to spend a little more time on it. And I’m finally at a place where I’m proud of how it looks—and how it works. I thought it might be fun to pull back the curtain and show how the website for this small-town movie theater runs on a surprising mix of modern web tech and good old-fashioned Maine thriftiness.

⚙️ A Site Built with Scraps and Intention
We don’t have a marketing team. Or a budget for fancy hosting. But I’m a tinkerer, and Ana’s a designer with a degree from Husson and a great eye—though I try not to bug her too much with my fun little side projects. So I built the site myself using Tailwind CSS, which lets me throw together something clean and usable without needing to call in the design cavalry.

The frontend—the part of the site you interact with—is built with React and Vite. These are tools you’ll find in a lot of modern startups. They make the site quick to load and easy to keep updated. I host it all on Amazon S3 with CloudFront in front, so it loads fast whether you’re checking showtimes from Fort Kent or from your campsite down the valley with one bar of signal.

But the part I really enjoy telling people?

🖥️ The Server Lives in the Theater
The backend—the part of the site that serves up movie times, blog posts, and upcoming bookings—is a Django REST API backed by a PostgreSQL database. And it runs on a Raspberry Pi in the theater itself.

Yep. That tiny little green computer that a lot of folks use to automate lights or learn Python is quietly running our live server right here in Fort Kent. It doesn’t make much noise, it doesn’t use much power, and it’s sitting a few feet from where people buy their popcorn.

It’s probably not the “cloud” most people imagine, but I kind of love that it’s grounded.

📰 Local Content, Local Voices
One of my favorite parts of the site is the blog. It’s small, but mighty. Most of the posts come from Rick Douglas, a community member who loves movies and generously donates his time to write thoughtful reviews of what we’re showing. Rick doesn’t just review movies—he reflects on them. There’s something comforting about reading a neighbor’s take on the latest animated feature or action flick.

To me, it makes the site feel like more than just showtimes. It feels like a little community paper, updated weekly.

💡 Why We Do It This Way
We could have gone the easier route and paid for something turnkey, but that’s never really been our style. We built this theater into something personal—and we wanted the website to reflect that too.

We keep things:
Lean – No huge bills, no waste
Local – Servers you can visit in person
Ours – From code to content

We’ll keep improving it—maybe add online ticketing, or a “what’s playing for kids” section—but for now, it does the job. It’s fast, it’s functional, and it’s ours.

Thanks for reading—and for supporting our small-town theater in all the big ways that matter.

See you at the movies,
— Brandon