Buffalo is full of people helping to cultivate cinema and we want to celebrate those involved. The Cultivators is a new monthly feature in which we highlight individuals who are integral to the presentation, promotion and production of film here in the queen city.
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THE CULTIVATORS #012 | ||||||||||||
MEG KNOWLES | ||||||||||||
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Curator – Beyond Boundaries Film & Discussion Series Artist – documentary & experimental media Associate Professor, Communication Department – Buffalo State College Website: knowleme.wixsite.com / Twitter: @MegKnowles
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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS | ||||||||||||
Although my family didn’t go to the movies a lot when I was a child, my father liked to watch old black and white movies late at night on television. He got me started watching films like The Philadelphia Story and All About Eve. Later, I worked with my high school English / Film teacher as a projectionist at the local Drive-In showing second run films like Annie Hall. He taught an inspiring course on the Auteur Theory in film, focused largely on the films of Jean Renoir and John Ford.
I made my first film in high school with a 3/4″ portapak video camera—it was a creative interpretation of an Emily Dickinson poem.
In college—in the time just before VCRs—the only way to see films outside of the local movie theater was watching the films programmed on campus. The screenings of both current and older movies were big weekend events, but the films would arrive in heavy 35 millimeter cases earlier in the week.
I had friends who wrote film reviews for the school paper and they would hold secret preview screening parties, privately projecting the films for a handful people. It felt exciting and glamorous to go to a private screening of a hard-to-find cheesy classic film like Giant or All That Heaven Allows.
I’m from Buffalo. I worked in New York as a talent agent for a number of years after college, but returned to Buffalo around 1990 to study documentary filmmaking at UB Media Study, where my mother was the assistant to the chair.
I’m pretty happy with Buffalo, but I suppose I would like to see movie theaters like the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas that serve food and drinks and have interesting curated series and performances with films (like a memorable foleyed version of The Wizard of Oz).
The North Park has been getting close to that over the past couple of years with its weekend special screenings. I feel that’s something that will really get people out to the theaters again.
• Walter Murch – In the Blink of an Eye
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TOP TEN FILMS | ||||||||||||
I don’t usually do favorite lists! Here are 10 narratives and 10 docs (in alphabetical order): Narrative |
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Documentary |
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Photo of Meg Knowles by Michael Niman.
Film stills from left to right, top to bottom are The Philadelphia Story, All About Eve, Annie Hall,
Giant, All That Heaven Allows, The Wizard of Oz and North Park Theatre’s repertory marquee.