Filmmaker Statement

I was asked by the current owners of the Uptown Theater and the future architects of the its reconstruction to create a film that highlighted the cinema's magnificence and history. Unlike the architects’ drawings and 3D renderings of a future cinema, the film serves as a testament to the beauty of the theater’s current state – a vacant space. Together, these materials will be used to encourage a donor to support The Uptown’s restoration of its original art-deco style, and reopening as the last movie palace in DC. Obviously, I hope viewers will discuss the beauty of theaters as a whole and how we must preserve them. But more deeply, I hope they are better able to discern the beauty of the most basic of places when guided by a more thoughtful eye. My core principle in directing this film was to show how the mundanity of these rooms is so spectacular. I wanted to focus on the unassuming remnants that gave clues to the life that the building had before.