Success ahead of projections
By: Kathy Boccella
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
11/26/2005

A film institute in Bryn Mawr, open less than a year, packs them in.

It's late on a Sunday afternoon, and folks are crowding into a vintage movie house for The Squid and the Whale, about the crumbling marriage of two New York intellectuals and the toll on their sons.

Afterward, a group of psychotherapists is scheduled to lead a dissection of director Noah Baumbach's semiautobiographical film in Cafe Seville, the latte-and-sandwich joint next door.

It's the kind of cineaste chat typical of urban film festivals. But on a genteel stretch of Lancaster Avenue, where a 1926 beaux arts theater has been reborn as the home of the nonprofit Bryn Mawr Film Institute, so many people are eager to chew over Baumbach's characters that some must be turned away. But for about 45 art-film enthusiasts who got in, dinner and homework will be getting a late start.

"People come up to me and thank me for putting this theater in," said Juliet Goodfriend, the institute's founder and president, sitting at the cafe's film-reel table. "We're a wild success."

Since flickering to life in March at a grand opening with Sir Ben Kingsley, the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, in the formerly shuttered Bryn Mawr 2 theater, has super-served its suburban audience with a program of independent and foreign movies, educational series, and community film events. On weekends, its two 300-seat screening rooms are often filled to capacity with patrons unaware that the Bryn Mawr relies on grants, membership dues and volunteers as well as ticket receipts. Goodfriend reports that attendance and membership - 3,300 people who have contributed between $45 and $10,000 each - are both ahead of projections.

Film distributors are wise to the expanded market for nonmainstream fare: Indie titles such as Good Night, and Good Luck now attract audiences in art houses and megaplexes. But the institute aims to be more than an outpost for films that debuted at a Ritz theater downtown.

"We want to provide a deeper understanding of film and to use film as a vehicle for education and awareness and all kinds of issues," said Goodfriend, 63, an attractive, silver-haired woman who routinely zips down the auditoriums' center aisles in her wheelchair and exhorts patrons to join "the most successful art house in the region."

The Bryn Mawr institute wants nothing less than to be a cultural hub that teaches movie literacy, boosts economic growth, and identifies up-and-coming filmmakers.

"They're a rising star in the region," said Scott Johnston, who curates the Festival of Independents, a regional showcase within the annual Philadelphia Film Festival, and hosts a weekly open screening at N. 3rd, a bar in Northern Liberties.

"They're not just a little art house showing films. They're doing outreach and community education, and providing programs in a culturally enriched sort of way," Johnston said.

In addition to serving as a traditional exhibitor, the institute runs a Tuesday morning film-and-lecture series (the current film-noir program continues through Dec. 20) and a repertory series that will screen Billy Wilder's 1944 classic Double Indemnity on Wednesday.

There's also been talk that the Bryn Mawr may do a Philadelphia Film Festival "best of the best" series and could eventually organize its own mini-festivals for a clientele that prefers historic theaters to stadium seating.

"It's the difference between going to a store downtown or going to a mall. There's a feeling of authenticity to these theaters," said John Toner, who runs the County Theater in Doylestown and the Ambler and is managing director of the Bryn Mawr. The three refurbished houses are tiny gems that share some staff, costs and programming.

This year's downturn in movie attendance, which Hollywood attributes partly to the growth in home viewing, hasn't affected art houses, Toner said.

"Our audiences tend to be baby boomers and older, who have a lifetime habit of going to the movies. For us, the 14-to-25 demographic is really absent," he said. To enhance the concept of moviegoing as a social experience, the theater recently opened the adjacent Cafe Seville, named after the original theater.

Barbara Clothier, who is in her 70s, remembers going to the Seville as a child. Now, she said, she's back at the Bryn Mawr about every other week. A favorite event was an August talk by Peter Falk and Paul Reiser after a showing of their movie, The Thing About My Folks.

"It's wonderful, absolutely wonderful," Clothier said of the theater, which she can walk to from home.

Though Clothier says she often runs into neighbors, the Bryn Mawr's location presents a challenge, said Ray Murray, artistic director of the Philadelphia Film Festival. Suburbanites tend to favor home-based entertainment, said Murray, who is also president of TLA Video, which has a store in Bryn Mawr.

"Audience development is probably their biggest challenge," he said.

To flush out a younger crowd, the theater offers midnight movies every Saturday. And on the first Monday of each month, area filmmakers are invited to bring their original works to an "open screen."

Institute manager Ben Hickernell, whose movie Cellar was shown at the Philadelphia Film Festival, believes that the Bryn Mawr is the only place in the region where anyone with a video camera can see his or her movie on a big screen. "That's a cool thing," he said.

Just a few years ago, the Bryn Mawr was another rundown theater whose single screen had been split in two. Goodfriend, of Penn Valley, who is a trustee of Bryn Mawr College and founder of Strategic Marketing Corp., a pharmaceutical marketing firm she sold in 2002, rallied the community to save the theater after learning that it was going to be turned into a health spa in 2001.

After a number of false starts, the institute paid about $2 million to buy the building. It hopes to raise $7 million more to restore the second floor and a stunning arcade skylight, and to install a historically accurate marquee.

Already in place is a community outreach component that includes a pilot program in "visual literacy" for third graders in the Norristown Area School District. Area groups, from Concerned Black Parents of Lower Merion to Main Line Reform Temple, call every day asking to use the theater for special programs or private screenings, Goodfriend said.

Which makes for a happy challenge: keeping up with the demands of a community that wants a more intense moviegoing experience.

"With only two screens," Goodfriend said, "we can't do as much as people would like."

________________________________________

Contact staff writer Kathy Boccella at 610-313-8123 or kboccella@phillynews.com.

© 2005 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.philly.com

.

.