“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” are currently filling movie theater seats, but what attracted movie goers around 100 years ago?
There are few film festivals or theaters left standing that show films from cinema’s early days of the 1920s and 1930s.
The Cinecon Classic Film Festival, though, is the exception — celebrating rarely seen films from this era. The event, billed as the nation’s oldest classic film festival, will take place over Labor Day weekend at the Old Town Music Hall, 140 Richmond St., in El Segundo for the first time in Cinecon’s nearly 60 years.
Built in 1921, the nonprofit Old Town Music Hall is historic itself.
Home to a 1925 Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ, with its 2,600 pipes, it has accompanied many silent film screenings that have been taking place there off and on for more than 100 years.
“It occupies a place of reverence for people who are film historians and film restorers and people who are interested in film beyond the best 100 films ever made,” said Angie Hougen, an Old Town Music Hall boardmember and volunteer who helped bring the film festival to El Segundo. “It’s really neat to see these rarities come to light.”
Bill Coffman and Bill Field refurbished the Mighty Wurlitzer, which they purchased from the Fox West Theater in Long Beach, and reopened the music hall as a movie theater in 1968.
Stan Taffel, a professional motion picture archivist at Pro-Tek Vaults in Burbank and president of Cinecon, became friends with Coffman and Field when he moved to California in 1997.
“They used to come to my apartment on Beachwood Drive and they would come borrow films,” Taffel said. “I would never charge them because we’re all in the good fight together.”
Bill Field died in June 2020 at 80 years old.
“With new caretakers like Angie and James,” Taffel said, “we wanted to honor them and honor the theater.”
Cinecon will open Thursday, Aug. 31, and end Monday, Sept. 4.
“We try to find films that have not…
Read the full article here