admin @ Sun, 2006-09-17 11:00
The first film in the new Edmonton Film Society's Marilyn Monroe series played to some 250 people last week - a number likely in excess of anything screening that night, say, in the city's multiplexes.
The EFS was founded at the University of Alberta in 1936. It was designed to show foreign films almost exclusively. At one time it was the largest society of its kind in Canada. I remember in the early '60s sitting through an obscure German film starring Horst Busholtz (The Magnificent Seven). It played in the Jubilee Auditorium, and to a full house. During those years, European filmmaking exploded on to the international scene with directors like Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini. Their films may have played well in New York but if you wanted to see them here, you belonged to the Edmonton Film Society.
But the Edmonton Film Society soldiered on with attendance that sometimes dwindled to 40 die-hard fans. The international film series dried up and what was left featured the movies (and stars) of Hollywood's golden age. The organization moved to the university and then on to its current digs at the provincial museum.
There are lively discussions today about the future of the cinema. Let's face it, the movies are bankrupt - without the ancillary markets of television and DVD, the movie, as we know it, would cease to exist. Theatres alone are no longer enough to support them. But the same things that keep the EFS alive will probably keep us going to the cinema.
And besides, these are people who love cinema. For them, going to the movies is a near-religious experience. There is no talking, no cellphones and nobody gets up for a bag of popcorn in the middle of the movie.
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