A call to arms.
I knew the IFS was an old boat when I took to her helm in 1997. I remember asking my predecessor, Steve Wingate, how many more years the IFS might last. He said "eight." And here we are, depressingly close to that bleak prediction. But I think the IFS can go on longer than that. I think the IFS can survive bad economic times and parking woes for one simple reason: you. If you are reading this there's already a good chance that you are an educated viewer that knows that, yes, your every dollar is a vote of confidence to whomever you choose to give it to. And if over 50,000 football fans can be bothered a half-dozen times a year to pay around fifty bucks just to park a mile from campus and then walk that same distance to see total strangers toss a ball back-and-forth, then why, on a just Earth, shouldn't equally cognizant beings be bothered to hazard campus parking every now-and-again to drink in the thought-provoking stories that are culled every semester as part of an adventurous film series that brings you films from all over the world, and all this for less than the cost of a beer at the ball game?

The cultural wars are ongoing ones, and so far, numbers don't lie: campus football attracts million dollar donations to build luxury boxes atop previously free parking used by people going to see dollar movies. Conversely, campus independent cinema exhibition attracts pennies by comparison. With cinema you have the full potential of letting your mind roam into the terrain mapped out by our human kin from all over the world, from tragedy to comedy, whether it be a drama, a documentary, or a flight of fancy. With football you have a bunch of strangers abusing their bodies so that one team can win, and the other lose. And yet it is football that moves citizens to spend millions of dollars on merchandise while the university pays several millions more for salaries, while alumni pony up another seven digit donation for luxury boxes. Why? Because 51,748 people will pay around fifty dollars five or six times a year, brave traffic congestion at its worst, oftentimes parking miles from campus, to make their trek to Folsom Stadium. Is this madness or am I mad? Hard to say, but at least your company in that dark room at Muenzinger makes me feel less alone. And if enough of you are willing to pay $5 several times a year to make a trek to Muenzinger Auditorium, brave a few extra minutes to look for free, or even $2, parking, then the IFS can, and should, continue. This is not a diatribe against football fans for being so determined so much as a call to arms for cinephiles to show just a fraction of their same determination.

If the IFS is going to survive it's not going to be because one person gives us a hundred dollars here or a thousand dollars there.* No, we will survive if everyone who comes gives us an extra dollar, and brings a friend, and revisits a film on the big screen that they thought they'd seen before, only to be pleasantly surprised at how much they'd forgotten, or how different the film seems with age, or how different it feels to see it with a new crowd.

There is no better time than now to re-educate yourself and a friend on the joys of the unique, big-screen celluloid experience. Yes, digital cinema is around the corner and, with your help, we hope to make enough money to afford decent digital projection for future screenings. But for now, repertory cinema, and second-run cinema, and premiere foreign cinema, on good old fashioned 35mm celluloid, is a thing of beauty, something to be enjoyed - here and now. Large numbers of people in New York City are spending twice as much money as IFS customers, and hours of commute time, to reach small movie theaters that get rocked by the nearby subway and are equipped with screens a third of the size of our Muenzinger Auditorium, and all that to see the exact same prints we bring you here at the IFS.

The International Film Series averages 35,000 people every year. That's pretty good, but it doesn't take into account rising shipping costs, exacerbated rental costs assigned to non-theatrical venues (these being often three times as much as the theatrical partners pay), or the fact that as a campus-located venue we are prohibited from selling concessions (which is where most theaters make their profit). The latter is actually, in my book, one of our selling points because it's one of the reasons we have the quietest auditorium in Boulder and we are pleasantly devoid of the incessant crinkling of packaging, and munching of popcorn, that plagues all other venues.**

Speaking of things that make us unusual: we have never shown commercials in front of our films, we never show more than three trailers (if any), and Muenzinger Auditorium had stadium seating decades before the posh multiplexes along Highway 36 even existed. And IFS is now the only theater left in Boulder (and probably Colorado) that actually has a Union Projectionist in the booth during every show. Yes, things can be rough around the edges (when you're showing over 100 films a year, occasional breakdowns are inevitable), but when you look at the films we bring, the filmmakers that visit, and the price we do the whole show for, it's simply a miracle we're still here. But we are. And we're here for you, because of you, and hope to be here for many years yet to come.

Pablo Kjolseth
IFS Director

*If any one person were to donate to the IFS a similar sum as that contributed toward the Folsom Stadium Luxury Suites, that person will, in fact have cause to make me eat my words. Plaque guaranteed.
**I really don't care, however, if you smuggle in your own popcorn. Just clean up after yourself and be quiet.