Malverne Cinema & Art Center begins new chapter, eyeing spring reopening
The Malverne Cinema & Art Center, which closed in 2024, is aiming to reopen later this year with new management and a more diverse focus. Credit: Johnny Milano
As the new year begins, the Malverne Cinema & Art Center is officially under new management.
Maria Dente, founder of the nonprofit Dente’s Dreamers, signed a lease on the cinema at 3 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. “Our goal was to get it signed by the end of the year,” she said, “so we were really pushing it.”
The lease opens a new chapter in an ongoing push to reopen the Malverne, a modest but much-loved theater that opened in 1947 and closed in September 2024. Dente, whose Lynbrook-based organization stages ability-inclusive theatrical productions, said renovations began Monday to make the cinema more wheelchair accessible and to add sensory-friendly chairs. Dente said her plans include knocking out a back wall in the building to access a small stage that has been hidden for decades.
“The mission is to keep hold of the historic value of the theater, being that it showed independent films,” she said, “but also welcoming the community, especially the disabled population.” Film programming could include new releases, classic films and matinees aimed at retirement-age viewers, while the stage would be open to various theatrical productions. The Malverne could also be staffed by adults with disabilities, according to Dente.
“We’re excited,” said Phil Sanzone, of Sunrise Management, which owns the Malverne Cinema. “I think they’re the right fit for the community.”
For its final 34 years, the Malverne was run by Anne and Henry Stampfel, a husband-and-wife team who still operate the Bellmore Movies & Showplace. The Malverne shuttered during the pandemic and briefly rebounded, but a dispute with Sanzone over a broken boiler finally persuaded the Stampfels to call it quits. Efforts to reopen the Malverne began almost immediately as Nick Hudson, founder of the entertainment-related nonprofit E2AC, began speaking with the Stampfels and Sanzone; he also began partnering with Dente. (According to the Malverne Cinema’s website, E2AC is its “fiscal sponsor.”)
Hudson and Dente began raising funds through private donations and an online merchandise store that began selling branded T-shirts, hoodies and pajamas in early December, according to Dente.
The Stampfels may or may not be involved with the Malverne going forward, Dente said, explaining: “We’ll reach out to them for guidance, but they have their own theater and our vision for the Malverne is a little different.”
“I’m so happy for them,” Anne Stampfel said. “I hate seeing it closed. When I drive by and I see the same posters I left hanging up, it kills me.”
Though Dente said she had hoped to open the Malverne by last month, she is now aiming to open in spring. The goal, she said, is “preserving the magic that was the Malverne and also bringing it some new types of magic.”
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