An Austrian Shade Curtain with festoons that gathers when it rises before every film.
Wooden opera house chairs with plush red, velvety fabric that help balance the acoustics in the room. And wool carpet with lion insignia evenly distributed throughout; one of the last made carpets made in a mill in Mississippi.
Even a curved balcony that allows films to be seen and heard from every angle.
These fine details are attributes of a 50-year-old independent movie theater on the campus of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. The movie theater, Cinestudio, was founded by two students in 1970. The students James Hanley and Peter McMorris were a part of the school’s then-Film Society but had nowhere nearby to watch films. So, they got creative. They got permission from Trinity to let them transition the Clement chemistry auditorium into a movie theater. The auditorium, which was designed to hold large classes and demonstrate experiments, also had a projection room. It was perfect.
The two began hanging discount store bedsheets as makeshift screens. They were showing movies all night, beginning with the double-feature, “Yellow Submarine” and “Alice’s Restaurant” – it was an anomaly to show two A-list movies back-to-back then. Soon, they needed to upgrade the theater. They had gone to the only bank in Hartford, Connecticut Bank & Trust, to ask for a $40,000 loan. The bank OK’d it, but not without a co-signer first. The then-college president Theodore Lockwood signed on the dotted line, giving James and Peter the go-ahead for their dream.
The hard work came later when the two, along with other student volunteers, began transitioning the classroom into a full-fledged theater. They had to learn how to install seating, add carpet to the walls for better sound quality, repair electrical systems, add Dolby speakers and more – they were determined.
The theater was then charging $1.50 for regular movies, 75 cents for late night showings – no one was getting paid. Student volunteers all ran the movie theater, and until 12 years ago not even James and Peter were taking a salary from Cinestudio. Only two part-time projectionists are paid. Today, Cinestudio is still student-run. It also helped to launch the college’s Film Studies Program and international film festivals, inspire the careers of several notable alumni in entertainment, and given students real life experience from marketing and publicity, to finance and customer service.
At 2:30 p.m. on February 22, Cinestudio will celebrate its 50th anniversary showing “Yellow Submarine” followed by festivities at 4:15 p.m. with a costume contest inspired by today’s movies and then a 7:30 p.m. showing of “Alice’s Restaurant” – all at no cost. As always, the theater is open to the public.
