Reel Entropy

One of my favorite things about the Texas Theatre is watching it fill up with people. It’s a very narrow lobby that doesn’t have nearly enough room for a full house to be in it at once, which is a design problem that all old single-screen movie palaces have to some extent. Because of the geography, I usually spend all day there if I head down at all, and the audience always seems to grow steadily over the course of the day no matter what’s playing – though maybe me being more excited for the matinees is a function of my own tastes. In any case, the lobby almost always turns into an unyielding crush of humanity as any given day goes on.

The Texas Theatre was built in 1931, and was nearly demolished three times in the ‘90s. It reopened under current management in the fall of 2010, and the Oak Cliff Film Festival has always been part of its identity under Aviation Cinemas’ management – they’ve been running the theater for almost 13 years, and this is officially the 12th Oak Cliff Film Festival, so the math is pretty easy.

Given the historic nature of the place, it makes sense that restorations and 35mm prints are an enormous part of the theater’s programming, and an enormous part of these film festivals. On day 3 of the 2023 Oak Cliff Film Festival, my whole day is committed to movies I’ve either seen or could have seen before – Fuzzy Head, which I’ve seen early prints of after meeting the director at a prior Oak Cliff Film Festival, a 35mm print of Alex Cox’ 1987 film Walker starring Ed Harris with Cox on-hand to take questions, and a screening of 1925’s The Lost World with a live score performed by the Anvil Orchestra.