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| Volume 11, No. 43 |
July 28-3, 2010 |
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| Wrangling the classics
Second-annual Plaza Film Fest offers marquee movies, fuller festival vibe | | By Leonard Martinez | | 
With dozens of films set to be shown at the Plaza Classic Film Festival from Aug. 6-16, two movies stand out as coups for the festival.
“Gone with the Wind” and “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope,” aka the original “Star Wars,” are iconic films that took a bit of work to get to the festival and expected to be popular with the fans.
“We had tried to get both films for last year’s festival, but they got held up because of rights,” said Charles Horak, the festival’s artistic director. “Some years they won’t have screenings. With ‘Gone with the Wind,’ we’ll be one of the few to show it during its 70th anniversary this year.”
Horak said there are very few screenings this year of “Gone with the Wind” because the studio that owns the films rights will be making a promotional push for people to buy the film on Blu Ray and DVD in the fall.
“Star Wars” may be a more recent film compared to “Gone with the Wind” but that doesn’t make it any easier to secure the rights to screen the film.
“George Lucas retains the rights to those films and he is very reluctant to have them screened in theaters,” Horak said. “There are maybe five screenings around the country a year.”
After several phone calls, e-mails and letters, Horak found out the guy at 20th Century Fox whose job it is to keep an original “Star Wars” print in his office closet would be sending the print to the festival to be screened.
Horak said he thinks what convinced Lucas to allow “Star Wars” to be screened at The Plaza is that the Plaza Classic is a nonprofit enterprise that will create a film fund that would be used as a funding source for local filmmakers, alternative festivals and other film initiatives. The fund is managed by the El Paso Community Foundation.
If “Star Wars” and “Gone with the Wind” aren’t your bag, there are 65 other films from different genres to choose from.
Classic comedies that will be shown include “Blazing Saddles,” “Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff,” and “Some Like It Hot.”
Sci-Fi and horror fans can look forward to “The Terminator,” “Star Wars,” “Alien,” and “Army of Darkness.”
“Before last year’s festival I was talking with a guy from Boston Light and Sound who installed the film equipment and he said we had an interesting scope of films we were showing,” said Eric Pearson, director of the Plaza Classic Film Festival. “We chose films that could have shown at The Plaza when it was first open from 1930 to the 1970s.”
A couple of holdovers from last year’s festival are the popular animated shorts, which will be sprinkled before certain films, film talks and guest appearances by those in the business. Guests include C.O. “Doc” Erickson and Nick Clooney, the recognizable former host of American Movie Classics (AMC) who just happens to be George Clooney’s father. Horak and Pearson drove to Mesilla recently for a special celebrity event to try and convince Linda Hamilton, Sarah Connor from “The Terminator,” who was filming a movie in Las Cruces, to make an appearance at the festival but she will be in Canada during the festival’s run and won’t be able to make it.
While last year’s festival went smoothly, Horak and Pearson both said some tweaks have been made to this year’s festival.
“This year we are trying to provide a lot of free outdoor entertainment and build on the festival atmosphere,” Pearson said. The outdoor entertainment will include concerts followed by a movie shown in the Festival Plaza outside. The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” will be the first film shown outdoors this Friday.
Pearson said festival organizers also increased the amount of time between screenings because some films started a little late last year because of the time it took people from the prior screening to leave the theater and get the next audience seated.
“We are not a multiplex and people were surprised last year they had to get in line to go to one theater,” Pearson said.
Festival organizers also have increased the number of local independent films that will be shown at the festival. Local films will be shown at the festival as part of “The Good, The Bad, The Indie v05.”
“Last year we showed a couple of features from local directors,” Pearson said. “This year we will show at least four to five features and a whole lot of shorts. We want to make the Plaza Classic Film Festival an opportunity to show their talent.”
A screening of local film “Hands of God” has already sold out and a second screening has been added. Gilbert Chavarria, who runs the local film Web site EPFilm.org, said the selling out of the first “Hands of God” screening is important to the local filmmaking community.
“It is incredibly important,” Chavarria said. “It shows that there is a strong local filmmaking community that has been waiting for an opportunity like this. By supporting all the local screenings, the local filmmaking community is investing in themselves by ensuring the success of the Plaza Classic this year as well as in years to come.”
Film fans are used to enjoying their movies with a bag of popcorn, a soda, and even smuggled in snacks. Food and drinks are not allowed inside The Plaza Theatre to keep the landmark in as good condition as possible.
PLAZA CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL
Plaza Theatre, 125 Pioneer Plaza
Thursday, Aug. 6–Sunday, Aug. 16
For more info visit plaza-movies.com
Click here for Film Festival Full Schedule
Comments or questions about this story? E-mail Secret@whatsuppub.com
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