Nice
Press!
Many
thanks to Judy Harrison for this article that was in the December
5th, 2003 issue of the BANGOR DAILY NEWS.
Sunset
Boulevard to rise on “Cinema
to Go”
By Judy Harrison
of THE BANGOR DAILY NEWS staff
BANGOR - Esther Rauch was not allowed to go to the
movies as a child in the segregated South. Her father, a minister
in Mobile, Ala., did not think it was right his children had to purchase
tickets in an alley behind the theater and then sit in the "colored" section.
Rauch longed to linger in the dark and see the images her friends
described.
One summer while visiting an aunt in Detroit, Rauch got
her wish. She and her sister went to see Sunset Boulevard at one of
the city's movie palaces.
Today, Rauch knows that as a child she didn't really understand the film and
probably wasn't old enough to see it. But the image of Gloria Swanson's face
filling that huge screen was burned in her memory.
That is the experience members of the River City Cinema
Society want moviegoers to relive or feel for the very first time - the transforming
power of moving images, larger than life, projected in the dark onto a huge,
blank canvas.
Sunset Boulevard will kick off a new series sponsored
by the society - "Movies about Movies" - at 7 p.m.
Wednesday, Dec. 10, at the Union Street Brick Church in Bangor.
The monthly series will be presented using "Cinema to
Go," the society's portable digital theater with a full-size
movie screen. Admission is $5.
What made the program possible, according to Kathlyn
Tenga-Gonzalez, artistic director for the film society, was a grant from the
Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation. The grant was used to purchase the custom-designed,
15-by-91/2-foot portable screen. The society uses a DVD digital projector to
show classic films.
Cinema to Go takes about 30 minutes to set up, said Tenga-Gonzalez last month.
That will enable the group to show films in different locations, including
venues outdoors in the summer.
For the immediate future, however, "Movies about
Movies" will be held at the Brick Church. A discussion about each film will
be held after it is shown. Sanford Phippen, host of "A Good Read" on
Maine Public Broadcasting, will lead the discussion about Sunset Boulevard.
The 1950 film, directed by Billy Wilder, won three Academy
Awards and ranked 12th in the American Film Institute's "100 Greatest American
Films of All Time."
Cinema to Go also allows the society to show classic films like Sunset
Boulevard that a whole generation of moviegoers has never had the opportunity
to see on a big screen, said Tenga-Gonzalez.
Films in the "Movies about Movies" series will
be shown on the second Wednesday of each month.
Founded last year, the society, in partnership with Movie
City 8 on Odlin Road in Bangor, has brought art and foreign films and documentaries
to the area.
The group's long-term plan includes opening their own
two-screen theater and cultural center in the Bangor area.
For more information, call 942-0306 or visit the society's
Web site at www.rivercitycinema.org.
©2003 Bangor Daily News, used
with permission. |
