GREENVILLE — Gutpunch Cinema almost didn’t exist.
In 2021, its creator, Aaron Arco, was thinking about moving from Greenville.
They had just left college and thought about other cities with more opportunities for independent movies and theater. They sought a community in Greenville that affirmed their queerness and aligned with their passion for film, art and theater.
But Arco, who’s from Mexico and lived in Phoenix before moving to Greenville, couldn’t find something that fit both needs. They found a supportive queer community but not much of a place for alternative, underground or independent film.
“There's been individuals and groups of people who have been trying to do interesting things,” Arco said. “But there seemed to be a little bit of a lack of cohesion, especially in the film-as-art community.”
Instead, they decided to create Gutpunch, an independent arthouse theater designed to provide a community for people of underrepresented backgrounds in film and provide a machine to bring back the “magic of the moviegoing experience.”
“As Greenville is growing and becoming a bigger art city, a destination space for small-town America, or small-city America, it was just kind of honestly ridiculous to me that we didn't have the independent arthouse movie theater,” Arco said.
South Carolina has few independent movie theaters. Columbia has The Nickelodeon arthouse theater and The Luminal Theater, which focuses on films from the Black and African diaspora.
In Greenville, there’s Camelot Cinemas off Laurens Road and South Pleasantburg Drive, a multiplex that shows smaller-scale films alongside major movies, such as a sequel in the “Trolls” franchise and “The Marvels” superhero movie.
Gutpunch, which is run solely by Arco, doesn't have a physical space yet. But one is in the works.
The theater started in 2022 with a dual screening of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” and a locally made short film.
Arco followed that playbook for subsequent events, showing classic films alongside local productions, including at a three-day film festival put on with support from local business owners in July.
“I think Greenville is scared of getting a little dirty. I’m all about filth in a very John Waters-sense. I’m all about what the underbelly of humanity is,” Arco said.
For Arco, the underbelly teems with independent classics like David Lynch’s “Eraserhead,” a surrealist film with disturbing audio and visuals from the 1970s about a man’s fear of parenthood, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Arco recalled viewers shifting in their seats when Gutpunch screened the film, but they also remembered the excitement viewers had when they saw it.
“Things like this have not survived, because people are not willing to be uncomfortable,” Arco said. “People are not willing to experience art and feel something intensely.”
Now, about a year since Gutpunch hosted its first screening, Arco said they’re working on a physical space in North Spartanburg. They hope Gutpunch will eventually become an arts hub and entertainment center.
“I don't want to be one of those people that just chats about doing something, I want to make sure we do something,” Arco said.
