Deal set to help The Screen keep rolling
Art house cinema on midtown campus to stay open thanks to Santa Fe-CCA partnership
Like the hero of a long-running film series who keeps coming back for endless sequels, The Screen, which went dark on April 30, just refuses to die.
On Thursday, the city of Santa Fe and the Center for Contemporary Arts announced they are joining forces to reopen the art house cinema located on the campus of the former Santa Fe University of Art and Design.
“The Screen is alive and well and flourishing,” Mayor Alan Webber said during a news conference at the property. “We’re taking something that people love and were afraid of losing and bringing it back to life.”
The city, which owns the roughly 60-acre midtown property, is letting the nonprofit Center for Contemporary Arts have the space for free for one year in return for including community programming under what the city calls a “service value lease.” The Center for Contemporary Arts will cover the cost of insurance, Stuart Ashman, executive director of that organization, said.
Programming will begin again Friday, July 13, with the documentaries Strangers
on Earth and Three Identical Strangers and a restored version of the 1969 animated Beatles’ film Yellow Submarine.
Jason Silverman, curator of the Center for Contemporary Arts Cinematheque, another longtime art house theater in Santa Fe, said the new space will allow the Cinematheque to double its Youth Partners Program, which screens films tied to educational programming to some 1,000 students.
The Screen also can be used to run Spanish-language films, Silverman and Webber said. For example, in mid-August, The Screen will host screenings of Mexicanmade experimental films, and in September, it will show the cult Mexican picture
Santo vs. the Evil Brain, featuring one of Mexico’s most beloved masked wrestlers combat evil mad scientists.
Beyond that, Silverman said, The Screen will give the Cinematheque the chance to “expand our programming, but not by 50 percent.” In some cases, he said, the same title may play at both cinemas, but he plans to use The Screen specifically for retrospectives. Both sites have both digital projectors and 35 mm projectors, which will allow them to play archival titles, Silverman said.
Silverman said The Screen will probably be open five nights a week. Former manager Charlotte Martinez will oversee the site as the Center for Contemporary Arts’ community engagement manager.
The Screen’s former curator, Brent Kliewer, will be curator emeritus, serving in an advisory role, Silverman said. Speaking by phone from his home in Oklahoma, Kliewer said Silverman “is the right person to run this. He understands the transition from the old 35 mm film era to the digital era much better than I do.” Kliewer said he hopes to sometimes “be part of curating special film series.” The Screen, originally called The Screen at Studio 2, opened in December 1998 on the campus of what was then the College
of Santa Fe. It was financed by New York City-based philanthropists Armand and Celeste Bartos and run by Kliewer. While The Screen showcased contemporary foreign and American-made art house and independent films — as well as classic and cult movies — it also provided an educational venue for college students.
The Screen continued to serve those purposes after the for-profit Laureate Education Inc. purchased the college in 2009 and renamed it the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. In the spring of 2017, Laureate announced it would close the school in May 2018 because of financial challenges and declining enrollment. A handful of Santa Fe University of Art and Design employees remain on the campus, but the lease ends Saturday.
City leaders and community members have been hustling to come up with ideas to reuse the campus, considering such notions as building affordable housing units, expanding the Garson Studios complex on campus or starting a business hub of some kind.
Webber said the City Council soon will hear a final presentation of possible uses of the campus — the result of a community input process. In the interim, he said, the city is leasing out some of the campus buildings to various organizations to make sure it “stays lit up.”
The city also plans to make the Driscoll Fitness Center on campus available to the public while the Fort Marcy Recreational Complex is undergoing remodeling work, said Matt O’Reilly, asset development director for the city. He also said the city is in discussion with Netflix about possibly using the entire campus for work ob a future film, but that deal “hasn’t been finalized yet.”