Revival cinema in Memphis?

I'm kicking off the 2007 blogging season (I can't believe I just wrote the phrase "2007 blogging season") with an atypically practical post and practical question.

Artbutcher recently posted a list of The Top Ten Films Made in the 1950's. His excellent list inspired this post, as it got me thinking a lot about the film scene in Memphis.

As you can surmise from my own excessively long comment, I'm a bit of a movie geek. I love old movies. I love revival movie theaters, especially ones that put a lot of thought into their programming and present really interesting retrospectives of various directors, national cinemas, or themes. In SF, I would periodically pour over the schedules of great theaters like The Castro and especially the amazing Pacific Film Archive and determine what films I should attend. The annual SF Film Noir Festival, Noir City, pretty much sealed my love affair with the SF film scene (though of course, it's got nothing on Paris or New York).

Alas, Memphis does not offer a whole lot in the way of revival cinema. The Orpheum does a summer film fest, featuring an array of classics. Many of the choices are predictable and obvious (Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz), albeit with a few idiosyncrasies. Occasionally the Brooks Museum shows old movies, and my compulsive internet searching has turned up a few oddballs, like last year's time-travel-themed film fest at the FedEx Institute of Technology. But there is no movie theater in Memphis devoted to showing old films, with innovative programming, all year round. If you want to see Fellini or Bergman on the big screen, you're out of luck.

This state of affairs seems unacceptable to my inner film geek. It appears that there are ton of interesting people involved in a local film scene here - not just Craig Brewer of Hustle and Flow fame, but a really vibrant local filmmaking community. There's also a good bunch of movie geeks - the folks at Black Lodge, and the people who support such excellent local traditions as the Memphis International Film Festival, the Indie Memphis Film Festival, and the Micro Cinema Club. While these festivals and get-togethers prove the vitality of the local film scene, and the appetite in Memphis for interesting and creative films, they do not fill in the gap created by the absence of any serious, year-round, well-known-to-the-public revival theater. Regularly viewing great classics of cinema is simply a different kind of educational experience (not better - but different) from viewing quirky animated shorts or local experimental stuff. A creative and artistically interesting city should offer all kinds of film viewing experiences.

So, what to do? Well, if a gigantic load of capital suddenly fell out of the sky and landed in my lap, I would happily try to start my own revival theater. Barring that unlikely occurence, I would be curious to hear if people think there might be an alternative way of kickstarting a revival film-watching scene in Memphis that does not involve building a new theater. For example, might it be possible to get people together to watch old movies periodically at places that host some of the other, quirky and independent Memphis film events, like the Power House or the First Congo, or perhaps even the Hi-Tone, who already have occasional (usually music-themed) movie screenings? As I'm new to Memphis, I don't know anything at all about these venues and if they would really be conducive to such screenings. But I've come across them in many late-night sessions on the good old internets trying to dig up the more interesting corners of the Memphis film world.

I suppose in the days of Netflix (and the actually much more interesting GreenCine) the idea of watching old movies with a crowd of strangers might seem antiquated. That's too bad, though, because movie-watching is, or at least can be, a fundamentally social activity, and there's nothing quite like the conversations you have with friends or even strangers after discovering a great movie. If there's any way to bring revival cinema to Memphis, without actually bringing a new cinema to Memphis - I want to know how it could be done. At least I already know artbutcher and gatesofmemphis would be up for it!!