The Oak Cliff Film Festival and a Conversation About Alamo Drafthouse
Hi all,
There are a lot of local cinema events this week for those out of town; you can skip a few paragraphs.
The big news is a big tease: we have a confirmed Kovacs award recipient, and we will let you know very soon. This will be an unusual selection that will, at first, make your head scratch, and then you will say…cool. Just don’t plan on leaving town at the end of September.
This Thursday night marks the start of the Oak Cliff Film Festival, an event we're proud to be a community sponsor of. We're sponsoring two programs that are more on the experimental side of VideoFest/Medianale, showcasing our and their commitment to supporting unique and innovative cinema.
The Cinema 16 shorts program is on Saturday at 3:30pm upstairs at the Texas Theater. This program of experimental work curated by Mike Morris usually has some 16 mm projection, which is always a treat. This year's collection is strong and will open your cinematic perspective if you come to the show with an open mind. The title of the show is a reference to a famous screening series in NYC programmed by Amos Vogel from 1947 to 1963.
The program we are the community sponsor for is “Doppelgängers3.” I did the Q&A at SXSW for this film with the director Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian. Through encounters with doppelgängers and meetings with scientists, visionaries, and cultural inventors, Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian and her doppelgängers offer an experimental vision and template for a future diaspora beyond Earth. Saturday at the Bishop Arts Theater Center at 8:15pm.
Other films worth seeing are “Never Look Away,” “Destroyer” by Judd Myers, which is part of the Narrative Short Block 1 Saturday at 2:30pm at the Texas Theater, and “Not an Artist,” at 12:30pm Saturday at the Texas Theater. There is much to see, so come on down to Oak Cliff.
On June 24, there will be a screening of “Remember This” at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum at 7 pm. “Remember This” is a film starring Academy Award nominee David Strathairn. The film follows Jan Karski, a reluctant World War II hero and Holocaust witness, who joins the Polish Underground and risks his life to carry the first eyewitness reports of war-torn Poland, including the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, to the Western world.
This event is free, but registration is required. You can register here.
Have a great week!
-Bart
A Conversation About the Sale of Alamo Drafthouse
Bart: So, last week, we were all talking about what would happen to the Alamo Drafthouse theaters in the DFW area, and this week, there was the big news that Sony was taking over all of the Alamo’s and their film festival. My first reaction is that big money will come in and destroy that alternative nature and culture of the chain and replace it with a heavy dose of Sony films. My gut sense is that vertical integration is not a good thing and will bring less and less interesting choices. But I might be wrong.
Elijah: My first reaction to the news was relief. After hearing that the DFW locations were closing down, the future of the entire chain seemed to be in peril. The biggest chain in America, AMC is struggling as it is and local theaters like The Texas have to offer alternative programming like comedy shows and podcasts to keep the lights on. Theaters desperately need the influx of money that a studio like Sony could offer them. The Paramount decrees might have made sense at the time, but they don’t anymore.
Bart: For those who did not go to film school, in 1948, The Supreme Court ruled distributors could not own the movie theaters that showed their work. This was known as the Paramount decree. This system has worked really well for a long time. But we are in a different media consumption universe now than we were in the forties. With Covid and streaming services, it has been hard for movie theaters to exist. The Alamo model is a bit better than others, to make money because it is based on people eating and drinking at the theater. This, tied to a theater based on cinema culture with a loyal fan base, has made it a better chance to survive.
Elijah: I think that the opportunity for the chain to stay open is better than them having to close more locations. And Sony in particular is a good player to have on board. As the only big studio that does not have their own streaming service, they remain committed to the theatrical experience. All of the big Sony releases like the Spider-man spin-off “Madame Web” and the rom com “Anyone But You” were theatrical only releases for at least a month. Even if Sony starts to show more of their own pictures at Alamo, it at least keeps some of that culture alive.
Bart: But will that culture survive? They are saying the right things, but don’t they often say the right things before they do the wrong things? Having deeper pockets can help, and I hope it does. I would love to have our theaters here back in operation and all those employees working. It all sounds good, but will this be a new trend that every studio will have its own theater chain?
Elijah: If a service like Netflix were to buy a chain like AMC, that would be the best of both worlds. Films would get shown on the big screen and then be available to stream at home. Currently, every studio is incentivized to boost their streaming service at all costs, at the peril of the box office. We just saw Disney release “Inside Out 2” to one of the biggest animated openings of all time. In another time, they might have sent the movie straight to Disney+ like they did with their other Pixar films like “Turning Red and “Luca.” I think it shows that a theatrical release is crucial to the bottom line for these studios.
Bart: If you care about the cinema experience, the best thing you can do is go out and see a film in a theater. Which leads me to “Tuesday,” a new film with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. This is one of the best films I have seen about death in a long time. This is the first feature for Daina O. Pusić. We think of Julia Louis-Dreyfus in “Veep” and “Seinfeld,” shallow and snarky, but here she digs in deep into a story about her daughter, played by Lola Petticrew, who has a terminal disease. This story is a twist on Bergman’s “Seventh Seal,” but we have a macaw with attitude instead of playing chess with death. Go out and see it. It is playing in many theaters.
Howdy,
It’s a great week to go out and see film. Bart has listed some great things showing at Oak Cliff this weekend. Here are some of the highlights for me.
On Friday at 9:45pm is the French vampire movie “The Vourdalak” which logline is “lost in a hostile forest, the Marquis d'Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, finds refuge in the home of a strange family.” On Saturday as part of the narrative shorts block at 2:30pm is the short “ILY, BYE” which stars everyone’s favorite part of “Hacks” Meg Stalter as this hapless woman trying to ace a job interview. Then on Sunday at 5:45pm, I’m interested in the screening of “The Cassandra Cat” from 1963 which is about a magical cat (I’m sold) who can reveal the true colors of anyone around them.
They also have some great branding for the festival this year that I am obsessed with.
If you aren’t coming out to the festival this weekend, we will be screening the new movie “Thelma” at The Modern this weekend. It stars June Squibb as a woman who gets scammed over the phone and wants to seek revenge. The trailer has got lots of laughs every time we show it, so I think it will be a big hit.
-Elijah