MFAH kicks off new outdoor film series
Starting this weekend, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s film department will make a heroic leap to the great outdoors.
After years of screening movies inside the Brown Auditorium Theater and the recently added Lynn Wyatt Theater, the department will debut a new screening venue on top of the Glassell School of Art.
The Garden also includes amphitheater seating at the base of the slope (“for pop-up programming and everyday use,” according to the MFAH website). For the next three Saturdays, it will be the museum’s new location for open-air movie-going.
“We have the capacity for people to sit there, whether it’s for a live performance or, in this case, a film,” says MFAH film curator Marian Luntz. “And we decided it was time to debut the space and give us a third venue, which is super-exciting.”
The department approached Austin-based, audiovisual rental service Limitless Light and Sound for a big screen and projection system. “We’ve been speaking to them for a while, but there was that pandemic that delayed the plans,” says Luntz.
Audience members will also get free popcorn and their own headsets, so they can hear everything that’s going on in the movie. Movie-themed cocktails will also be available for purchase.
Did the museum get the headsets so they don’t bother neighbors who might get irritable about the sound pollution?
“I don’t know about that,” says Luntz. “But I think there is ambient noise that will be canceled by having your personal headset. Also, I think speaking about this, as repertory film programming, since we are showing three classics, having the experience of watching the film with the headset will make you more attuned to the aspects of the movie that you maybe didn’t remember or didn’t notice because you were watching it on your couch.”
The movies that will be screened are all beloved, familyfriendly favorites that have one thing in common: They’re about a hero’s journey. Kicking things off is “The Wizard of Oz,” Victor Fleming’s iconic 1939 retelling of L. Frank Baum’s famed fantasia. With the movie celebrating its 85th anniversary this year, Luntz and company thought it would be a good idea to have Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion (and don’t forget about Toto!) hit the yellow brick road on the big screen. “It just seems like the type of film that will attract an all-ages crowd,” she says.
The 1986, puppet-filled flick “Labyrinth” will be the next feature presentation. “Star Wars” lord George Lucas and the late Muppet master Jim Henson teamed up for a beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy where a teenage Jennifer Connelly goes to another world in order to save her kidnapped baby brother from the clutches of David Bowie’s glammed-up Goblin King.
The series will wrap up on April 20 with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Fans who constantly quote this 1975 cult classic (and have probably never seen it on the big screen) can watch those wonderfully silly Brits from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” give their own laugh-filled version of the Arthurian legend.
If this outdoor film party becomes a success (and our eccentric weather doesn’t rain these showings out), then the MFAH will most likely schedule more screenings in the future, particularly during the summer. This would put MFAH alongside Rooftop Cinema Club Uptown, Moonstruck Drive-In and other Houston spots where you can see a motion picture under the stars.
“I think that would be really fun,” says Luntz. “A lot of museums — our colleagues at MoMA, MFA Boston, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis — all do summer programming. One of the advantages in Houston is the seasons are eccentric and we wouldn’t necessarily have to be restricted to the summer, and that’s what we’re trying out in the spring, on this occasion.”