Lost Cinema Surfaces In San Jose / 16mm film devotee shows old gems by candlelight in restaurant basement
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John McMurtrie, Chronicle Staff Writer
Dec. 10, 2000 Updated: Aug. 6, 2012 2:52 p.m.
Geoff Alexander with his collection of thousands of 16mm films. Chronicle photo by Jeff Chiu
The underground movement that Geoff Alexander is spearheading is, fittingly enough, in a basement. At 7 p.m. every Thursday, devotees gather in an old speakeasy below a restaurant in downtown San Jose. The bare, cool space is lit by candles, and regulars, many holding pints of beer and calling out to each other by first names, take their seats at small, plain tables.
Alexander, lit cigar in hand, briefly addresses the crowd, then heads to the back of the room, where he fiddles with some switches. The distinct whirring and clicking of a 16-millimeter projector kicks in, and the audience falls quiet as images begin to fill a screen.
Another show has begun at Cine16.
In an age when art houses are closing down, movies are dumbing down and a high premium is placed on digitally enhanced sound and visual effects, Alexander is running a free weekly film festival that shows only 16mm movies --
and educational ones at that.
So-called educational films are the much-maligned movies that many people remember being forced to watch as schoolchildren. They're the ones most associate with earnest, bespectacled scientists performing experiments, or "Leave It to Beaver"-like characters delivering stilted dialogue about moral rectitude.
Certainly the genre is full of these movies, but they're not the ones that interest Alexander. "There's a stigma that these are boring, uninteresting films that at their very best have camp value," Alexander says. "But there's a difference between the academic films that I look at and campy films from the 1950s."
The screenings at Cine16 are organized according to themes, and a look at any of Alexander's programming notes shows the seriousness of his purpose. On Dec. 21, Cine16 will feature films on black dancers in the United States, including Arthur Mitchell and Alvin Ailey. On Jan. 11, the program will be modern art, with shorts on Jasper Johns and Jack Tworkov.
A recent night focused on poetry. One of the short films, "Gwendolyn Brooks" (1967), shows the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet reading from her work and commenting on the life of blacks living in inner cities and suburbs.
Another film included in the screening is "Wholly Communion" (1965), which documents a chaotic, smoke-filled poetry convention at Royal Albert Hall in London. Among the pipe-smoking beatniks in attendance is Allen Ginsberg, who spends much of the time lying on his back, surrounded by barefooted followers.
As a Thanksgiving treat, Alexander threw in a hilarious short featuring a young, glitter-free Liberace serenading a special guest standing by his piano: a live turkey.
In the four years that Cine16 has existed, Alexander has shown roughly 750 16mm films. He owns enough of the narrow-gauge films -- thousands of them -- to keep fresh programming going for years.
"We're really in the beginning of an appreciation for this type of film that will only increase in time," Alexander says of 16mm, which was introduced in 1923 as a smaller and cheaper alternative to the 35mm format. "If there's a groundswell of interest, it will carry over to other communities across the United States."
This may seem like a grand vision for a dying medium, but as Alexander says,
"We've got a mission here. It's not a hobby. It's a full-blown research project."
There's no reason to doubt Alexander. In addition to writing program notes for his screenings, he has hunted down obscure copies of 16mm films that even the filmmakers thought no longer existed.
"Many schools are dumping them -- literally," Alexander says of the films; he's obtained many of his own from schools. Also, prints are rapidly decaying with age. "As a result, this really valuable piece of U.S. film history is disappearing, and in some cases I've got the only print of a given film that I'm aware of. And that's scary."
Alexander is able to bankroll Cine16 thanks to his day job: marketing for a technology company. He refuses to seek other sources of funding ("Inevitably, it's tied to other things"), but one day he hopes to turn Cine16 into a nonprofit and find a space where he can create a museum of moving images for educational films.
He's off to a good start. Alexander travels around the country and overseas to interview 16mm filmmakers, many of whom are old and have never had filmographies organized for them.
"Not only were these people virtually unknown to everyone," he says, "but the companies they worked for were gone and so the data was very quickly disappearing. I began to have a real passion for figuring out who these people were. I found that, in my opinion, this is the hidden corner of U.S. cinema history."
Alexander regularly invites 16mm filmmakers to screenings, where he says audiences give them the praise they rarely received earlier in life.
"They left an amazingly strong body of work in many cases," Alexander says. "Before they pass on, we want to make sure that they get some appreciation."
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Alexander, who describes himself as "between 18 and 80" and bears a slight resemblance to playwright Sam Shepard, became fascinated with 16mm films several years ago, when, as a special education teacher, he showed movies on Goya, Picasso and other artists to his students. Occasionally, he'd bring some of the films home, where he and friends would sit out on his balcony, have a few beers and project the movies onto an apartment building across the way.
"I guess I really picked up a passion for showing films in noncinematic venues," he says.
His moment of epiphany came when a neighbor called the police to complain about the noise.
"Five riot cops in full riot gear showed up in my driveway," he says with a laugh. "I decided that was it -- we had to get a public place."
Within little time, Alexander secured the basement of the Agenda Restaurant & Lounge, where many patrons have dinner and later head downstairs -- drinks in hand -- for films.
"I wanted it bohemian," he says of the space. "And we got it. I can certainly say we're the only venue in the United States where you can smoke, drink and watch really great films once a week."
Alexander likes the fact that he is touting "the most technically retrograde technology" in probably the most technology-oriented place on earth.
"The reaction I get from most people in this city . . . it's sort of raised eyebrows and 'What do you do that for?' " he says. "The level of support, as it were, in San Jose is not what it could be. But maybe these are the kinds of communities we ought to be doing stuff like this in."
Cine16 patrons agree. "What's really special is he shows things you just can't see anyplace else," says Rick McGowan, who regularly attends screenings.
"We don't have much here in San Jose," adds Barbara Vitcosky. "And this is one really cool thing to do."
Cine16 The theater screens 16mm films from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursdays in the basement of the Agenda Restaurant & Lounge, 399 South First St., San Jose. For information,
visit cine16.com.
John McMurtrie
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John McMurtrie is the book editor of The San Francisco Chronicle.