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‘Preserving Palaces’ filmfest in Chicago, Sept. 14-15
posted by
Andy Pierce
on
August 30, 2007 at 7:50 am
CHICAGO, IL — Save the Date!
HISTORIC THEATRE PRESERVATION FILM FEST SEPT. 14-15
“Preserving Palaces"
The Struggle to Reclaim America’s Cinema Heritage…
That’s the title of a festival of documentary films about a variety of historic theatres — saved, lost and on the brink. The venue is the Portage Theatre, 4050 N. Milwaukee Ave., in Chicago, as a part of the Portage Film Forum.
The tenative schedule includes the following films: “Preserve Me a Seat,” “Uptown: Portrait of a Palace,” “Loew’s Paradise Theatre,” and “The Wizard of Austin Boulevard.”
A “theatre preservation discussion panel” will also be a part of the festival.
For more information, call the Portageat (773) 736-4050, or .
Comments (4)
The program will be:
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
7:30 PM Uptown: Potrait of a Palace (John Pappas & Michael Bisberg, 2006, 26 min)
8:00 PM Preserve Me a Seat (Apartment 101 Films, 2006, 144 min)
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
7:00 PM The Wizard of Austin Boulevard (Louis Antonelli, 1994, 30 min)
7:30 PM Loew’s Paradise Theatre (Back in the Bronx, 2003, 30 min)
8:00 PM Memoirs of a Movie Palace (Christian Blackwood, 1980, 47 min)
9:00 PM Theatre Preservation Panel Discussion
Tickets are $9 per day, $16 for both days. For information about the films, download the flyer (requires free Adobe Acrobat Reader).
Correction to the above: Preserve Me a Seat is 104 minutes, not 144.
What an excellent festival, although you may end up wrecked and crying at the end of the weekend, with so much melancholy and sadness. Let’s hope the discussion can stirr things up and make people walk out with a smile? Or maybe not, it is very serious business. Jim made a shorter version of Preserve me, which is even better I think.
When I showed it, I had about a dozen framed enlargement of old postcards on display. You could do something likewise, let me know if you need help (I have hundreds of scanned postcards). There’s also a documentary on the Joy and other theatres of New Orleans.
In all, I wish you all the luck and lots of visitors!
I have developed an innovative plan to acquire, develop, restore and operate the Uptown Theater in Chicago. If you’d like to help and provide creative support e-mail: