Is DVD killing film societies? (1 Viewer)

[Mark Zimmer]

NYC may be a different beast, but I know there were tons of film societies on campus here in the pre-VHS days of 1980-1984, and there are nearly zero now. DVD can't kill film societies, because VHS already did the deed.

 

[Derrick_Ellis]

It's sounding a lot like a culture shift in your area Mark. Sometimes it helps to get the word out again to people what the file society is all about. After that, it's just word of mouth. Hopefully things will shift back on your campus and the younger audiences can appriciate film as well as digital media.

 

[Felix Martinez]

You can't attend a full symphony orchestrated presentation of City Lights in your living room. You have to see it in a theater. DVD has its place and film has its place.

That's very true, but film is not a live experience - it's an artificial one, and theaters are going to have a heck of a time as the quality of home presentation improves. I once tolerated the theatrical experience. I don't have to anymore.

Felix

 

[James David Walley]

I don't know about film societies per se, but I do recall that, twenty or thirty years ago, most major cities had at least one and generally several "repertory houses," where classic films were shown on a weekly or semi-weekly basis, and drew large crowds and a regular (i.e. at least once a week) clientele. L.A. had at least four of them -- the NuArt in Santa Monica, the Fox Venice, and two others in North Hollywood and Sherman Oaks. Often, the line at the NuArt would stretch around the block.
That was, of course, just about the time that home video of any kind was becoming available, so that you could only see a Citizen Kane or a Seven Samurai, let alone a Days of Heaven, at such a place maybe once a year.
I moved to Seattle in 1982. While the repertory scene wasn't as thick as L.A., there was always one and generally two such theaters around. As home video grew in popularity, it shrank to just one venue, which got shuffled around to smaller and smaller theaters of the chain that hosted it. Since DVD came out, and became established, the theater gradually changed from showing the "classics" to obscure current films, generally foreign, that weren't out on home video. Now, I'm not even sure if the venue exists at all.
I don't know if it was DVD that was responsible (probably not, but it may have been the final nail in the coffin). I tend to suspect that such societies and repertory houses were always an arrangement that only existed because people couldn't own copies of these films to show at home. Once even VHS became common, the reason for their existence faded away.

 

[Ted Todorov]

We New Yorkers must really be different creatures, because we keep insisting on watching those old films in actually movie theaters. Days of Heaven, since you brought it up, will play this Saturday and Sunday at the Film Forum.
I think that a substantial number of New Yorkers don't have TVs or VCRs. I know several. I was certainly in that category until I got a Macintosh with a DVD drive in January of '99 and was blown away by the quality and features of DVDs. I still don't have TV in the conventional sense -- my 16:9 Sony WEGA does not have a NTSC tuner, so I couldn't watch TV even if I wanted to (I do watch TV shows on DVD though -- I'm greatly enjoying the M*A*S*H* box right now -- no laugh track (or commercials)-- what a concept!
Ted

 

[Jason_Els]

moved thread....