The old Biograph Theatre has faded into history, but not from memory.
Since 2012 marks 40 years since the independent movie house opened on West Grace Street, it was evident a celebration was in order.
"Celebrating the anniversary is a habit," said Terry Rea, the Biograph's original manager. "We had a 20th anniversary party and then a 30th. It wasn't a matter of whether we were going to do [a 40th], but how we were going to do it."
This is how:
The James River Film Society will present a double feature — a trademark of the Biograph in its heyday — on Saturday at 7 p.m., at the VCU Grace Street Theatre, 934 W. Grace St., just down the street from the site of the Biograph. (The building is still there but is unoccupied.)
First up Saturday night: a 50th-anniversary print of "Breathless," a 1960 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, followed at 9:20 p.m. by "Lonely Are the Brave," a 1962 film starring Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands and Walter Matthau. Tickets are $20.
The event will kick off the nonprofit film society's 2012 series of screenings titled "The Golden Age of Repertory Cinema" and will serve as a fundraiser to establish a small, storefront cinema in downtown Richmond that could wind up being reminiscent of the Biograph.
"We billed ourselves as a repertory cinema, and what that means is we did anything we felt like," Rea said with a laugh. "Since we were an independent theater, we didn't have the clout … the theater chains had.
"The heart of our operation included first-run foreign movies and independent films and included second-run things, sort of like what the Byrd does now. Midnight shows were a part of our operation lots of times."
The Biograph went dark in 1987 and had much going against it, including a declining neighborhood — since revitalized — and what Rea described as "a narrow base … for what we were trying to do, which was to run an art theater."
"I think if the Biograph opened today, with the same concept, it would probably do better than it did back then, especially in a good location," said Rea, who managed the Biograph for almost a dozen years. The Richmond market is larger and broader, which is one reason he believes the notion of a new small, storefront theater might work.
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