Our official outdoor movie season kicked off last night with a screening of the 1961 jazz movie Paris Blues, starring Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier and Joanne Woodward. We teamed up with our local jazz radio station (KRTU) and Main Plaza, a beautiful venue in the heart of downtown San Antonio to celebrate the Year of Jazz. And what a celebration! Live music from jazz trombonist Ron Wilkens and his quartet got things off to a sizzling start and the film that followed was a real treat for cineastes and jazz fans alike. Featuring an Oscar-nominated music score by Duke Ellington, a club scene with trumpet master Louis Armstrong (that earned enthusiastic applause from our audience) and gorgeous stars in a beautiful setting, this movie was perfect for an al fresco screening on a lovely spring evening.
Looking for public outdoor cinema screenings? The list below is what we have found so far for 2012. Please let us know of other outdoor movie series not on the list.
We LOVE movies. Especially outdoor screenings of
movies. There is something singularly special about the cinema al fresco
experience that you cannot get from the multiplex.
We have operated a roaming outdoor cinema in San
Antonio since 2002. We started out with a sheet and a borrowed projector in
front of our local video store and have since grown to three inflatable screens
with regular series throughout the city. In the past ten years, we have seen
enormous growth in the number of outdoor film events. With the increased
availability of inflatable screens, outdoor movies are literally popping-up all
over.
One purpose of this blog is to promote outdoor film
events worldwide. Send us your listings and we will help spread the
word.
We are also interested in hearing from outdoor
movie producers like ourselves. There are a lot of challenges to putting on a
live movie event, no matter if your audience is ten-thousand or just ten.
Please, share your stories. What works? What
hasn't? What have been your worst outdoor cinema production nightmares? [One of
ours: someone forgot to turn off the automatic sprinklers and they came on
halfway into our event. What a huge, wet mess!]
Very Funny Scene from Portlandia. [Unfortunately, we've seen behavior that rivals this.]
