By KARLEIGH YANCY/Editor-in-Chief
On March 10, 2025. Trevor Hicks had lived in Tyler for one year and one week. Besides his girlfriend, Molly Barlow, Trevor had no friends here. Trevor wanted to change that. So, on March 10, 2025, Hicks got to work. He quietly bought a domain, created a Facebook page, opened a server on Discord… and just like that, East Texas Film Society was born.
This was not Hicks’ first attempt at establishing a film society. Back home, in Addison, he tried something similar, with little success.
“I tried, to like, find a venue first and, you know, get a place to actually have the events at, rather than kind of start getting people,” Hicks says. “So anyways, it didn’t really work out.”
He learned his lesson and his new plan was simple: focus on the people, and go from there. He started small, posting on Reddit and the local Facebook page, “All Things Tyler,” to build a community online.
“The first two months were pretty slow. It was just me making those PNGs of all the movies that movie theaters were showing in the area that weren’t brand new,” Hicks says. “Then eventually that became too hard to do and to try to be the president of it and have meetings and organized stuff.”
THE PEOPLE
Since then, the community has grown substantially, now boasting 66 members on the Discord server and 329 followers on Facebook. Rodrigo Gomez, Rus Malik, and Jeremy Weaver have been added to the ETXFS board. Invitations to cohost trivia nights with TAG+ started and the board established a relationship with Lake Country Playhouse in Mineola.
The Tyler Film Festival asked Hicks to serve on the review board, and for East Texas Film Society to be a sponsor for the annual event held at Liberty Hall in Tyler. The festival, which screens short films, was a turning point for the organization as a film loving community.
After screenings on each night of the festival, film society members attended an afterparty, where they mingled with local filmmakers, discussed favorite films, and – most importantly – forged friendships.
“This was the first time I felt a sense of community in Tyler so far,” ETXFS member Saffron Bowline said in a Discord message after Night 2 of the Tyler Film Festival. For Bowline and her partner, Justin Aldredge, ETXFS isn’t just a group of fellow movie nerds.
“Especially in East Texas, it can be very isolating, and places like this, that accept people who are different or weird. …It’s good to know that you have a home,” Bowline says.
“Counterculture is the lifeline towards having all cultures being able to exist,” Aldredge adds. “There is a popular culture here in East Texas, and you can feel it wherever you go. And so having a connection with people who are different… is really important, and it’s something that saves lives, you know?”
Rodrigo Gomez, ETXFS vice president, says the organization fills a gap in the creative scene in East Texas by bringing together people from different demographics.
“I’ve always wanted to be a part of creating something that was more cohesive, so that people who were younger have a space to learn from people who are older,” Gomez says. “And then people who are older relate to people who are younger and say, ‘Oh yeah, we have more in common than we do anything else.’”
Gomez, Hicks, and Malik, the treasurer, met at one of the film society’s first events, a trivia night with TAG+.
“We became chums moderately quickly,” Hicks says. “I mean, we have the same interest in movies: highly acclaimed stuff and like, you know, the criterion collection. Everybody who’s anybody loves the criterion collection. It just worked out that they wanted to be involved as much as they were able to be. So, whenever I got to the place where I felt like I was able to kind of bring more people on. … I told them, do the application, you’re pretty much in.”
Talking about the pair further, Hicks states, “I mean, they’re my friends now, which was one of my main goals: to get some friends. So now I have them.”
THE PLACE
The Lake Country Playhouse is not exactly the height of luxury. Nestled in historic downtown Mineola, the jutting neon spires make it stick out like a sore thumb in an otherwise typical and unassuming small-town facade.
The lobby is tiny, barely enough room for the line to get a popcorn and an RC coke from the concessions. If you take the left entrance into the one and only screening room, you may get the ever-loving snot scared out of you by a life-size fiberglass Charlie Chaplin statue.
Inside, is a large auditorium, with props littering the edges of a stage, a massive cinema-style screen framed by red curtains, and rows of classic theater-style chairs.
Opening in 1920, Lake Country Playhouse boasts the elusive and prestigious title of being the oldest continually running movie theater in Texas. However, it is not the sleekest place to catch a film. It’s certainly not flashy.
It shows about one new movie a month, and boasts old films and b-movies the rest of the time. You will find no fancy arcade, no bowling alley, no “straight-to-seat service”, no reclining chairs. But for the cinephiles in the ETXFS, the theater has become an icon
“I was just in awe at the way they’ve preserved it — or they haven’t updated it, which I mean, it shows they haven’t updated it,” Hicks says. “But it’s nice, because I feel like going back in time a bit. It makes you kind of feel like you’re living in the ’70s or something, where you didn’t have the conveniences of the recliners. You didn’t have the conveniences of the chairs that support your neck.
“Sometimes you have to contort and twist a little bit to get in a comfortable position. It’s nice to go there and to watch something that’s old and you get to just live a little bit in the past, and that’s nice because sometimes I do get tired of the modern conveniences of everything.”
One of ETXFS’s primary events is the “New Hollywood” film series in Mineola. Functioning a bit like a book club, once a month members are encouraged to go to the Lake Country Playhouse to catch the selected film.
The series has featured “The Producers,” “The Graduate,” “Midnight Cowboy” and “Five Easy Pieces.” Often, impromptu hangouts occur after the screening, with members gathering at a bar or restaurant to discuss the film, talk about shared interests
and bond.
To the members, Lake Country Playhouse is a symbol of community and authenticity, and a monument to the thing they love.
Although film society members are scattered across East Texas, for some, the distant trek to Mineola is worth it.
“You can tell that people who really love movies, not just current movies, but the history of cinema … they work there, and they want you to have a good experience, and it’s a beautiful theater,” Bowline says, when asked why she would drive a far distance just to watch a movie.
Aldredge chimes in. “It is two things: we have to do these things to keep community and culture alive, but also, we want to!”
While going to a traditional theater may seem like an inconvenience, Hicks argues otherwise, calling the experience of taking in a film with other people a shared consciousness. “Going to a place that’s dedicated to a specific event and expecting there’s going to be 15 or 100 people there and just kind of like taking the world on a pause and just, just witnessing something. I mean, it’s art.”
THE FUTURE
While overjoyed with the astronomical growth, Hicks hopes that the community will continue to grow, mirroring the Austin Film Society started by director Richard Linklater.
“At the place that it’s at right now, I’ve achieved, like the first goal which was a community,” Hicks says. “And I’m hoping it’ll, like, maybe double or maybe triple, you know, by the end of next year.”
When asked about why people should join ETXFS, Hicks had a simple answer. “It’s a community. If you want community, join the community.”
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