Last Updated: 8/22/24

ALL SECRET CINEMA PRESENTATIONS ARE SHOWN IN 16mm (or larger!) FILM ON A GIANT SCREEN (NOT VIDEO...NOT EVER!)

Since 1992, the Secret Cinema has been the Philadelphia area’s premiere floating repertory cinema series, bringing hundreds of unique programs to nightclubs, bars, coffee houses, museums, open fields, colleges, art galleries, bookstores, and sometimes even theaters and film festivals. Drawing on its own large private film archive (as well as other collections), the Secret Cinema attempts to explore the uncharted territory and the genres that fall between the cracks, with programs devoted to educational and industrial films, cult and exploitation features, cartoons, rare television, local history, home movies, erotic films, politically incorrect material, and the odd Hollywood classic. As long as it exists on real celluloid, that is—Secret Cinema screenings never use video/digital projection. While mainly based in Philadelphia, the Secret Cinema has also brought programming to other cities and countries.

Election Season at the Rotunda

Thursday, September 12, 2024
7:30 pm (note earlier than usual start time!)
Admission: FREE

The Rotunda
4014 Walnut Street
Philadelphia

Has presidential election fatigue hit you yet? Tired of the divisiveness, endless commercials, mailings and campaign lies? Why not take a break by attending the next Secret Cinema screening -- featuring films about past presidential elections? On Thursday, September 12 we'll return to the Rotunda in University City to present Election Season, featuring newsreels, documentaries and campaign films from past races to the White House.

There will be one complete show at 7:30 pm (note earlier than usual start time). Admission is free.

This screening is part of the Rotunda's ongoing "Bright Bulb Screening Series," which offers free movies on the second Thursday of every month, throughout the year.

A few highlights of Election Season will be:

The Election of 1932 (1966) - This school film released for Social Studies classes by Encyclopædia Britannica Films featured selected scenes from an ABC-TV documentary called F.D.R. It consists almost entirely of fascinating newsreel clips documenting the transformational first election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as he defeated incumbent president Herbert Hoover in a landslide.

We the People (1940) - The Republican National Committee produced this campaign film (and at least three others) for candidate Wendell Wilkie, a moderate (and recently Democrat) businessman. As an opponent to F.D.R., Wilkie argued against New Deal spending and especially against Roosevelt's unprecedented third term, but it was a hopelessly uphill battle.

Army-Navy Screen Magazine #45 (1944) - The Army-Navy Screen Magazine was a newsreel that was produced by the Army Signal Corps and shipped out bi-weekly to troops here and overseas, in hopes of boosting morale and explaining the war. This episode showed the presidential elections participated in by folks back home as well as by the soldiers themselves, thus underlining the difference between democracy and Hitler's fascism. Shown voting are "regular" Americans, from teachers and bakers to such movie stars as Lewis Stone and Bob Hope.

Primary (1960) - This short (53 minute) feature about the Wisconsin primary campaign for the Democratic nominee for president would transform the look of documentary film. The production team of Robert Drew (including cameramen Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert Maysles) requested and received complete access from the leading candidates, John F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey. Using lighter, quieter and more flexible equipment that they'd developed independently -- shoulder-mounted cameras, wireless tape recorders -- they were able to follow the two men with an intimacy never before seen in documentary film, creating a "direct cinema" with a minimum of narration, and no "talking head" interviews. Never was the political process revealed so thoroughly, as the candidates move from television station interviews, party galas and small-town meetings with farmers, smiling and handshaking through it all. Primary was rejected by all three television networks, but Robert Drew Associates was then contracted by ABC-TV to make a series of influential documentaries, before his talented team split off to make films like Don't Look Back and Salesman.

Plus more!

FUTURE SECRET CINEMA EVENTS (more info soon):