Newspaper Page Text
earliest days of the cinema are wound
up in a convoluted web of competing,
<4F oddly-named machines and mediums
dreamed up by dozens of hucksters, geniuses, savvy busi
nessmen, and amateur enthusiasts, all of whom seemed
to stumble upon strikingly similar ideas at roughly the
same time. Consequently, pinning down the origin of ar
guably the most substantial advance in mass media over
the past century and a half has proven nearly impossible.
Among the swarrr. of landmark dates in the art that crowd
the final decade of the 19th century, however, one of the
most definitively important was Mar. 22, 1895. On that
date, two brothers, aptly named Lumiere (as in "light"),
debuted 45 seconds of film showing workers leaving their
recently-deceased father's photography factory. On Mar.
22, 2007, 112 years to the day after that historic screen
ing, Athens will host the opening ceremonies of an event
celebrating the art that sprung from that milestone: the
third annual Robert Osborne's Classic Film Festival.
While the Festival by comparison is still quite young,
the idea for it goes back a good deal further. A decade
ago, in his old stomping grounds around the University
of Chicago, Festival director Dr. Nathaniel Kohn had
the idea to screen an uncut, 70mm version of Stanley
Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey to commemorate the
day the movie's technological antihero HAL 9000 came
online. The response to the screening was so overwhelm
ingly positive that Kohn and a fellow Urbana native
and well-known film critic decided to turn the one-off
screening into an annual event. Roger Ebert's Overlooked
Film Festival proved such a success that Dr. Kohn—now
a professor at the University Georgia, director of the
Peabody Awards, a prolific writer on film and mass com
munication, and the producer of such films as Zulu Dawn
and last year's locally-made Sundance Grand Jury Prize
nominee Somebodies—saw no reason the prospects for a
similar festival in Athens shouldn't be equally bright.
IMfcr. Kohn hit upon the idea of showing films with
which most people had at least passing familiar
ity, but, for one reason or another, might never have
enjoyed in their full vitality and vibrancy. "Our goal,"
says Kohn, "is to introduce these films as they were meant to be
seen." To this end, he enlisted Robert Osborne to host and curate
the Festival. As Dr. Kohn notes, Osborne "has probably seen more
films than anyone on the planet and has impeccable taste in mo
tion pictures." Osborne is well-known as the host of Turner Classic
Movies, author of 75 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the
Academy Awards and also for his stint as the Academy's celebrity
greeter on the red carpet for the past two years. His consummate
suitability for the job, however, was due in large part to the ency
clopedic knowledge of cinematic history, both on- and off-screen,
which he has amassed as a film critic, historian and journalist.
Over the past two years, Mr. Osborne has invited many of
his acquaintances, covering a broad swath of the movie-making
industry, to share the Classic Center stage with him. Among the
guests this year who'll be talking with Mr. Osborne are comedic
chameleon, Second City alumnus, and actor in, quite literally, hun
dreds of roles (most notably as a Christopher Guest stalwart.) Fred
Willard; Marni Nixon, who was the entrancing, lyrical voice behind
Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr and Natalie Wood in many of the
golden-era movie musicals and will be signing copies of her recent
well-received autobiography; and Colleen Camp, whose extensive
resume includes films as disparate as Wayne's World and Apocalypse
Now. The Festival will also give less immediately recognizable,
but still vastly influential voices from the industry an opportu
nity to share tales and insights from behind the scenes—such as
the storied producer and winner of the Academy's Jean Hersholt
Humanitarian Award, Roger Mayer; prolific continuity supervisor
Angela Allen; and director/ producer Marilyn Agrelo, whose film
Mad Hot Ballroom will also be featured. Further, several of these
guests, alongside distinguished UGA professor and film scholar
Richard Neupert, will join in a panel discussion of the changing
demands placed on, roles for, and nature of film actors past and
present on Friday, Mar. 23 at 10:30 a.m. Dr. Kohn also mentions the
Festival's intention to build student "awareness of classic film and
the incredible artistic and sociological treasure they represent."
Consequently the staff is both actively encouraging student partici
pation in the Classic Film Festival and securing class time so the
guests can speak directly to students at the University. At its core,
Kohn notes, this festival serves as an opportunity to "bring the
University and the local community together in a major cultural
event."
T here is ample evidence that the Festival has put down abiding
roots in its Athens. Dr. Kohn says, "You hear people in bars
and restaurants talking about the Festival. It takes about three or
four years for a film festival to fully invade the public conscious
ness, and we are just about there." One of the more obvious rea
sons for the Festival's growing presence on the Athenian cultural
landscape has been Mr. Osborne's meticulous selection of films
(see facing page for a roster of this year's movies). As the "world's
foremost expert on the Academy Awards," many of Mr. Osborne's
choices for this year, as has been the case during the past two, will
be justly lauded, timeless, award-winning films. But, as Dr. Kohn
rightly notes, "we each have our own definition of 'classic'. These
films happen to fall within Robert Osborne's definition, and his is
a pretty broad one. Robert's goal is to provide a balanced program,
with films that appeal to a wide range of individuals." The distinc
tion of classic has little to do with box office numbers or gold
decorations and everything to do with the immediate and lingering
effects they have on scores of people transported from a darkened
theatre to a place and time flickering on the screen before them.
T his alchemy of light and sound is precisely what sets Osborne's
festival apart from simply watching an old movie at home.
Once again, under the deft hand of a master craftsman in the art
of theatre technology (the appropriately-named James Bond) the
U ltimately, this sense of a shared encounter is the
Festival's central animus. The directors have planned
a show of Ray Ruggeri of Cinemabelia's exceptional movie
poster collection to spark conversation in the lobby, a
performance by the Georgia Children's Chorus onstage be
fore The Sound of Music, and a drawing for those willing
to dress like Marilyn Monroe for the screening of Some
Like it Hot with a prize from Watkinsville's Ashford Manor
Bed and Breakfast. Other local and regional businesses
are also joining in on the act. Athens First Bank and
Trust will give away a gift basket, as will Turner Classic
Movies, for every evening of the Festival. AirTran Airways
will give away two business-class roundtrip tickets to any location
in the country on Mar. 24, and soon-to-be-opened local arthouse
theatre Cine will be giving away memberships. To Dr. Kohn, the
broadness of the interest and the sense of community it fosters
augur well for cinema in town. "Add what Film::Athens is doing,
the opening of the Cine theatre, and the various local productions
and films made by Athenians," he says, "and you have the founda
tion for a regional film center." Recalling how a similar event in
Austin turned that city, in a relatively short span of time, "into the
third largest production location in the country; so we see Athens
in a few years." Indeed, considering the raft of local businesses
and artists stoutly behind the Festival in its third year and the
decidedly bullish recent history of movies produced in town, the
collective synergy suggests that film—classic and cutting-edge, lo
cally-shot and otherwise—as well as Robert Osborne's Classic Film
Festival itself, will remain fixtures in the Athens arts community
for many years to come.
Brandon Waddell
Tickets are available at the Classic Center Box Office and at www.classiccen-
ter.com. Admission to individual films is $10 (except The Man Who Would Be
King, which is FREE!). Panel discussion on Friday, Mar. 23 at 10:30 a.m. is
FREE! Passes to all films are $60. $45 for students with valid ID. For more
info, see www.grady.uga.edu/osbornefest.
WHAT: Robert Osborne’s Classic Film Festival
WHERE: Classic Center Theater
WHEN: Thursday, Mar. 22-Sunday, Mar. 25
HOW MUCH: $1D—$60
\
/
Classic Center Theater will undergo a metamorphosis into
a world-class cinema: a 60-foot, perfectly luminescent
screen at the front; a magnificent soundsystem on all
sides precisely tuned to the space; and a sophisticated
35mm projector for the pristine archival prints of the
films upon which the Festival's directors insist. The
setup, says Kohn, "is state-of-the-art; we can't make
it better than that." Many of the films in this year's
line-up were specifically chosen for their "widescreen
and CinemaScope ratios" to take maximum advantage of
the exceptional setup. In his welcome letter to Festival
guests, Osborne recalls being awestruck, despite having
seen the movie "probably 25 to 30 times," at one such
showing of Casablanca. "It's rare these days when we get
such an opportunity," he muses. "As great as it is to be
able to see films we love, or great films we've missed,
on DVDs or via television screens, there is nothing quite
like the impact of seeing them up there on a mammoth
screen, sharing the experience with others." Though the
majority of attendees will likely have seen many if not
all of the movies on the Festival's bill, perhaps many
times, few will have had the opportunity to see them
with the vivid detail of the original prints, on a grand
cinema screen, or in a room suffused with the electric
pulse of a thousand other souls each engulfed in the
collective experience. The magnetism of the relatively
rare event hasn't gone unnoticed in the wider film com
munity, says Kohn. The Festival is "starting to bring film
lovers from all over the country to Athens."
16 FLAGP0LE.C0M MARCH 21,2007 NEWS & FEATURES I ARTS & EVENTS I MOVIES ! MUSIC I COMICS & ADVICE I CLASSIFIEDS