Film Night Is Back

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Featuring Coop Members Working in the Business

By Gabriel Rhodes

If you’re a fan of cinema in any form, you might be pleased to learn that the Coop has a multitude of filmmakers among its ranks. From directors to editors, producers to set designers, gaffers to grips, we got it all. 

Almost 10 years ago, the Coop Film Night Committee was formed to showcase the work of filmmakers from the Coop. Since then we’ve screened over 100 films of all shapes and sizes – from animation to documentary, feature narratives to short music videos. We feel that the Coop’s creative community should be celebrated and shared, and it’s our job to bring their work to you. 

Once a month we showcase films that count Coop members among their key crew. We follow our screenings with a Q&A sessions featuring those key contributors so Coop members can dialogue directly with the filmmakers and learn about their creative process. It is also our intention to provide a venue for films that might fall outside of traditional distribution networks to be seen, e.g., small-budget, independent productions by filmmakers who are cutting their teeth or who might see filmmaking as more of a hobby than a career. Our hope is that these filmmakers are buoyed by the appreciative Coop audience and encouraged to make more work. 

At the Coop – from directors to editors, producers to set designers, gaffers to grips, we got it all. 

When the pandemic started, our screening room in the 2nd-floor Meeting Space went dark. However, we are now prepared to restart our monthly screening series after a nearly 3-year hiatus. We will be holding future screenings remotely on Zoom. All screenings will still be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers, and it is our hope that the format change will still feel as intimate and supportive as our in-person screenings were. Most of the films we will be screening are not available on other streaming services. We are not another version of Netflix. We are community cinema, powered by the creative capital of the Coop members! 

Our first screening will be My Kid Could Paint That, a 2007 feature documentary by Amir Bar-Lev. For more information about the film and the screening, please see the ad at the bottom of this article. 

To receive the screening link or be included on our email Listserve for future screening announcements, please send a request to be added to: jlymiller@me.com.

To submit films for screening consideration, please email a link to the film with a short synopsis and filmmakers’ bio to: gabrielrhodes@me.com.