The Birth of Film in the Heart of Iowa

An award-winning documentary tells the magical story of Frank Brinton and the oldest operating cinema in the world.

In a poster for Saving Brinton, collector Michael Zahs screens an early film once thought lost to history on a barn in Iowa.

By Michael Judge

In the southern and eastern part of Iowa sits the town of Washington, population 7,252. Its picturesque town square and brick storefronts, not to mention its location in the heart of the American Midwest, make it seem like your ordinary small town. It’s anything but. Washington’s State Theatre, formerly an opera house, showed its first motion picture to an astounded crowd on May 14, 1897, making it, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, “the oldest continuously operating cinema theatre in the world.”

Beyond that, the theater holds a never-before-told piece of film history, one that is the subject of an award-winning documentary by filmmakers Tommy Haines, Andrew Sherburne and John Richard. Saving Brinton, an enchanting 90-minute film first released in 2017 and currently streaming on Vimeo, tells the story of a collection of 130 early nit…