The Secret: Georgia Production Partnership - Southern Screen Report

Also, Robert Osborne, who intros movies
on Turner Movie Classics before they
air, has been doing a film festival here in
Athens called the Classic Film Festival for
the past couple of years. They have to bring
all the projection equipment in from outside
Athens and there is a man named James
Bond who does that. We call him the 007
of the projection world, because he sets up
all the projection equipment for the Classic
Film Festival. He also collects
old vintage projection
equipment, refurbishes it,
and then installs it and does
design work for theatres.
Through the Osborne
fest, Brigitta got in touch
with James and he came in
to do all the theatrical installation
at Ciné. So, the
equipment at Ciné is really
top of the line, and some of
it is vintage and originally
restored. For example, the
bases for the 35mm projection
equipment are refurbished
antique bases, but
the projectors are new.
Is it open to the public for touring?
KL: Absolutely, we’re open to the public
now. You need a ticket to watch a movie
in the screening rooms, but anyone can
enter Ciné, look at the facility, and hang
out at the bar café if they want. There’s
also a multi-function, multi-purpose space
that right now has an art exhibit, but it’s the
kind of space we can do a lot with for special
events like catering, receptions, workshops,
seminars, stuff like that.
In the future, there will be a restaurant
in here too, which will be a separate
business concern. One of the best chefs in
town, Hugh Acheson (Five and Ten, at Five
Points in Athens) has gotten some recognition
recently on a national scale from Food
and Wine magazine and is on the rise. He is
starting up a new Mediterranean tapas restaurant
in front of the house, opening between
July and sometime in fall.
How long did it take to plan and
launch?
KL: The planning had been going on for
about four years. The actual build out and
construction phase started in the late fall of
2005. So all in all, it’s been several years.
Who picks what movies play at Ciné?
KL: It’s a group process; we have a
board of advisors, primarily, Brigitta, our
founder and executive director; and our
general manager, Paul Strawser. They do
a good job of coming up with films that
they personally are very interested in having.
And then we have a team of advisors,
a lot of whom are from UGA, and filmmaker
friends who regularly attend film
festivals and are on the lookout. We generally
try to book films that wouldn’t come to
Athens, movies that only play in selected
city markets. When possible we try to get
the filmmaker to come and speak about
the film, too. For example, we ran Iraq in
Fragments and the director James Longley
came to do the introduction and had a discussion
afterward.
We’re also planning an environmental
film festival. We’re doing a little preview,
an awareness screening of a shorts program
from the Oakland Museum of California.
They host the EarthDance Environmental
Film Festival every year that’s environmentally
focused. We’re showing their touring
program as a way to generate interest
in doing a full-on festival in coordination
with the University of Georgia’s Institute
of Ecology. It will be a partnership between
that department and Ciné, and grow into an
annual film festival based here in Athens at
Ciné, focused on ecological and environmental
issues in kind of a broad sense. Not
just documentaries, but also narrative films
that also touch on the subject.
Can anyone bring their films and try
to get them screened at Ciné?
KL: We’re always open to suggestion
and we’re very open to the local
community. We’re a little bit limited
because in one of the screening rooms,
we can only show 35mm prints and not
many indie filmmakers use those. But we
do have a digital room and that room is always
available for rental. Anyone is always
welcome to have their own private screening
or screen a film out of our schedule.
We have a little place on the website
where you can send in your suggestions
for the kind of films you want to see. We’re
just opening, so we’re still feeling out what
this area and Athens wants to see, and figuring
out how we can incorporate that into
our programming.
It’s nice to hear that Ciné wants to support
local filmmaking.
KL: I’ve been involved in the local
community for a long time and I’ve been
making films in the area. I think it’s really
important to support local filmmaking
and for Athens in particular, that area
is really growing right now. There are so
many young filmmakers doing their own
thing here, and there’s a great convergence
with the music scene. We have lots of folks
doing music videos or crossovers where
musicians will score filmmaker’s films.
We’re looking into doing some kind of a
local film festival that could be a showcase
of local work.
For more info, see the Ciné website at
www.athenscine.com. §
www.screenreport.com May 2007 Page 11