The new Oberlin Film Society (OFS) will screen Paris is Burning. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, Paris is Burning chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latinx, gay, and transgender communities involved in it.
See the full OFS schedule
The Department of Cinema and Media at Oberlin College in collaboration with Cleveland Cinemas presents The Oberlin Film Society
For more than a century, the Apollo Theatre has been an historic public gathering site. As technology moves us away from such shared spaces for watching movies and onto our laptops and mobile devices, the Oberlin Film Society (OFS) will support the Apollo as a communal space by offering the college and town a range of classic, foreign, and independent films that we can watch together.
How is this different from what already happens at the Apollo?
These films are curated – selected from earlier time periods, alternative cinematic traditions, or other cultures – and guided by Cinema and Media faculty, for the purpose of using cinema to entertain, enlighten, and foster community. We have long been inspired by the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Cinematheque and hope to create at the Apollo something similar on the west side of Cleveland.
This effort brings us closer to fulfilling our purpose, begun when the College bought and renovated the Apollo Theatre over a decade ago, to honor this 112-year old cinema theater by making it a central piece in the educational mission and cultural life of the College – what the Allen Art Museum or Hall Auditorium or the Conservatory currently do for the other practicing arts on campus and in town.
Our name, the Oberlin Film Society (OFS), may be familiar to some, for it has a longstanding tradition at Oberlin College among faculty, staff, and alumni who remember seeing films presented under this name in King 106, Kettering Lecture Hall, and Hall Auditorium in previous decades. It seemed fitting to us now to revive this name — which represents and welcomes all in both the college and town called Oberlin — as we move to fully utilize the Apollo as a cinema theater and community center.
This endeavor embodies our warm and established working relationship with Cleveland Cinemas, which will continue to provide screenings of first-run films at the Apollo.
With this initiative, we hope to recapture the unifying spirit and function of a community movie theater, where people gather together to enjoy cinematic stories, spectacle, and history, and to have a fun and relaxing afternoon or night out with their neighbors.
OFS will screen a different film each week and, when possible, show it twice – on Tuesday evening at 7:15pm and on Sunday afternoon at 4:30pm – so that town, college, and community folks with busy lives can attend.
Welcome back to the beloved Apollo Theatre and to the new Oberlin Film Society!
The Oberlin Film Society Team:
Geoff Pingree and Rian Brown-Orso, OFS managing directors
Anni Yang and Tiago Furtado, OFS coordinators
Michael Deane and Joel Mandoke, Cleveland Cinema
