By Brandon Morley
from The Journal Gazette
Movie connoisseurs in Fort Wayne with an appreciation for foreign and independent films will be treated to a weekly film series starting Thursday thanks to a partnership between the Allen County Public Library and the Cinema Center.
The first film in the series is a Norwegian movie called "Buddy" and begins at 7 p.m. at Cinema Center, 437 E. Berry St.
"The library is a good place to find an obscure film. It's nice to put the Cinema Center crowd together with library patrons, hoping we'll start to frequent each other's facilities," says Leslie Lundgren, librarian of the art, music and audio-visual collection at the main library.
The new series is from Film Movement, a DVD-of-the-month club of award-winning independent and foreign films from some of the world's top film festivals, including Cannes, Toronto and Sundance.
The library bought a subscription to Film Movement, which sends one film each month and allows a free screening of that movie. After the movie has been shown at Cinema Center, it will be added to the library's permanent collection for residents to check out.
The program seemed a fitting situation for both the library and Cinema Center, officials said.
"We have the films, they (Cinema Center) have the space," Lundgren said of why the partnership was formed.
Film Movement fits in with the Cinema Center's mission, too.
"It's a great opportunity to see films as an art, showing movies that won't come to Fort Wayne any other way," said Catherine Lee, Cinema Center's director. "It's another opportunity for audiences to see something projected on a big screen, not a home screen. It's neat that Film Movement makes the opportunity to see them for free."
To kick off the series, five films will be shown with the hopes of continuing the series into the fall.
Lundgren says it's also planned to have speakers before or after each film to highlight some of the issues or themes relevant to the film.
Lundgren said this is a good way to give context to the film and add a little cultural education to the audience's movie-going experience.