A series celebrating the Dundee Theater’s art-house history while looking forward to its future
Forty-six years ago this month, the Dundee Theater, then part of the Cooper theaters chain, programmed a film series meant to test the waters on a rather lovely idea. “We have noted around the country a growing interest in the motion picture as an art form,” a Cooper rep told The World-Herald in October 1970. “We hope to encourage this.”
Interestingly, just seven years earlier, the Dundee had rebranded as an art house, with no less than Fellini’s 8 1/2 as its kickoff feature. The move was cut short in 1965 when “The Sound of Music” took over for an extraordinary 118-week run, but then along came this fantastic series of classic revivals and art-film gems — a series we’re thrilled to excerpt this fall. Featuring a host of great directors (François Truffaut, Orson Welles, David Lean, Ingmar Bergman, and Max Ophüls among them), as well as selections for all ages (from 1933 alone: KING KONG starring Fay Wray and the Marx Brothers’ DUCK SOUP), the series is a way to celebrate the history of Omaha’s last surviving single-screen cinema and anticipate the Dundee’s own revival a little more than a year from now.
Three films in the series will be enhanced by Screen Chats, informative and fun discussions highlighting film as an art form and led by Films Streams Education Director Diana Martinez. Screen Chats will follow BLACK ORPHEUS (Oct 24, 6:30 pm), HÄXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES (Oct 29, 3 pm), and 8 ½ (Nov 10, 6:30 pm).
