Guest Post by Alison Kozberg
As Managing Director of Art House Convergence, an association dedicated to advancing excellence in art house cinemas, I have the great privilege to collaborate with dozens of women leaders from around the country to imagine a more equitable future of the film industry. We know that moving images are powerful, that exhibition matters, and that having a positive social impact requires adaptability and a commitment to change across all parts of an organization.
Supporting women filmmakers by exhibiting their work is an essential part of this effort, and many theaters around the country have developed series dedicated to showcasing the work of female filmmakers. These programs, which include the Bechdel Film Festival at the Nightlight in Akron, Ohio, the Women’s March at FilmScene in Iowa City, Iowa, and The Future of Film is Female at Nitehawk and MoMa in New York, demonstrate the enthusiasm for women filmmakers nationwide, refuting the myth that feminism is exclusively a coastal or metropolitan phenomenon.
Art houses can also challenge presumptions about film history, particularly the reigning misconception, as historian Shelley Stamp notes, that “filmmaking has always been a man’s realm.” Over 60 percent of the art houses in our network screen repertory titles, which means that each year hundreds of cinemas in every part of the United States have the opportunity to reframe film history for their audiences. Series like BAM’s “Punks, Poets, and Valley Girls: Women Filmmakers in the 1980s,” the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s “Liberating Hollywood,” and Stamp’s own curated program, “Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers,” which screened at 25 art houses around the United States, not only introduce underseen films to audiences, they also illuminate women’s long-standing contributions to the evolution of the medium.
At our annual conference we are regularly discussing the canon. Who gets to decide which films are important? How can these hierarchies be toppled and remade? For me, rebuilding the film canon and shifting conversations about film history requires using all of the tools at our disposal — programming, introductions, marketing, and film descriptions — to encourage our audiences to see films with fresh eyes. By examining Alfred Hitchcock’s treatment of women, or how white privilege operates in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (as BAM did in their excellent series “On Whiteness”), art houses can use familiar titles as a springboard to address how bias has elevated some films while obscuring others.
Film history is not static — person by person, and piece by piece, it’s evolving, and being rewritten. In recent years a combination of foundation support, restoration, art house exhibition, and critical engagement have enhanced public awareness of films including Kathleen Collins’ “Losing Ground,” Barbara Loden’s “Wanda,” and Claudia Weil’s “Girlfriends.” Screening at art houses around the country, these films, which explore women’s interior lives as teachers, outlaws, and artists, are among the titles that will populate future lists of best films of the 20th century.
Movie theaters are not inherently good, but I am consistently moved by their capacity to do good. Theaters can bring people together to celebrate and discuss stories told by female and gender non-conforming filmmakers. They can teach us to watch films more closely, to unpack their values, and to discern their political impulses. They can advocate for creativity, community, and collaboration.
Hundreds of women work in film exhibition as programmers, operations managers, projectionists, executive directors, and educators. They curate films, make popcorn, introduce films, and most importantly ask people about their experiences at the movies and are ready to hear their answers, even when those answers show how art houses need to continue to grow and change.
I firmly believe that everyone passionate about the future of film should spend time at the movies and be ready to listen and learn from the audience around them.
Get to know your local art house, and spend time in theaters and with each other. Home viewing technologies might be ubiquitous, but sharing spaces and ideas is more powerful than ever.
September 18 is Art House Theater Day and over 100 theaters across North America will be celebrating with special screenings, including pre-release presentations of Brett Story’s “The Hottest August,” a doc recorded over the month of August 2017 in New York City and its outer boroughs, and the restoration of Ildikó Enyedi’s 1989 Cannes’ Golden Camera winner “My Twentieth Century,” a portrait of separated identical twins.
Alison Kozberg is Managing Director of Art House Convergence, a North American association that provides resources and networking opportunities for art house cinemas. Kozberg has worked in art house film exhibition for over a decade and has managed and contributed to film programs, symposia, and special events for museums including the Getty Research Institute, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), and the Walker Art Center and has long been devoted to supporting independent cinemas, such as the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, where she began her career as an Operations Manager and The Nickelodeon Theatre in Columbia, SC, where she served as Director. Kozberg is President of the Board of Los Angeles Filmforum, Southern California’s oldest continuously operating exhibitor of experimental film.
