The solution to sustainability of feature-film exhibition is sliding from disruption to innovation: “event-izing” is one of the catchphrases for making the theatrical experience memorable and lasting. Excavations from the first century of feature-film production make for a lightly booming business: classic films on bigger, properly illuminated screens, the reflected light of the things the hundred years of cinema so far have left as artifact are electrifying younger audiences as well as gray and fading ones. Year-round Chicago has the Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute, Facets Multimedia, the Music Box, Doc Films, Chicago Film Society and a raft of other exhibitors paying mind to what would be otherwise lost to a fog of pixels and streaming availability. The Siskel’s Bergman 100 showed most of the retrospective of work by the Swedish master in digital format, but its scope—twenty-six features of his approximately sixty works, across three months—offered both sweet refresher to those who appreciated the Swede’s range, as well as vital introduction for those who had never seen his work on a big screen. (Ray Pride)
