Plaza Classic Film Festival Announces Partial Lineup; Star Wars Film Still Being Pursued

Like any good sequel, the Plaza Classic Film Festival is looking to top itself.

It may have done so with a way of watching movies that young people probably have never experienced – — a drive-in.

This year’s 11-day festival lineup in August will feature a “quasi” movie drive-in nine stories up, on top of a parking garage Downtown, El Paso Community Foundation Executive Vice President Eric Pearson said. The foundation is responsible for putting on the festival each year.

“The lineup is still in flux,” Pearson said on Tuesday as some of the films were announced. “We’re excited about the titles and making a bigger footprint.”

Part of that footprint includes “The Ten Commandments: Treasures from the Production Archives” exhibit at the El Paso Museum of Art starting July 17. The exhibit will include gowns, jewelry, conceptual drawings and correspondence from the acclaimed biblical epic’s production.

“That Ten Commandments’ exhibit is just huge in my mind,” Pearson said. “It is enhancing what we have been striving to do. We pride ourselves on showing great films and having people come down and have the opportunity to remember films they had seen. But it is also about the cultural enhancement and important perspective into the art of film making. I think the exhibit is a wonderful opportunity for this.”

The 11-day festival will run Aug. 4-14 and will feature more than 80 film screenings, celebrity appearances, film talks, concerts and the chance to view costumes and memorabilia from one of the festival’s headlining films. Nick Clooney, father of actor George Clooney, will once again be a special guest.

More than 80 films will be screened during the festival, including “Taxi Driver” (1976), “Blade Runner” (1982), “The Godfather, Part II” (1974), “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953), “Dracula” (1931), and “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” (1958). The festival will also celebrate the recent restoration of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” (1956), starring Charlton Heston.

“We’re very excited by the growth and popularity of the Plaza Classic, and this year we are designing more ways for audiences to broaden their knowledge of the artistic and technical merits of these classics. More fundamentally, the experience of watching great films in one of the nation’s finest examples of theatrical architecture remains the driving reason for producing this festival,” the festival’s artistic director and film historian, Charles Horak, said in a news release.

There are still plenty of films to be announced, many of which will be announced through contests on the festival’s website. And because the lineup is still not set, that means festival organizers are still pursuing films, including Star “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”

“We thought last year in having ‘Star Wars’ (the year before) that we’d be able to have ‘The Empire Strikes Back,'” Pearson said. “But you have to do the geometry, see who’s able to license it. That’s been a difficult nut to crack.”

Pearson said they have not come close to getting the film but that they haven’t given up trying to get it, either.

All of the screenings will be shown in and around the historic Plaza Theatre Performing Arts Centre, an atmospheric movie palace built in 1930 that seats over 2,000. The theater was restored in 2006 by the El Paso Community Foundation, which also produces the annual festival.

Also announced Tuesday, The Alloy Orchestra will return to the Plaza Classic to perform its live accompaniment to Joseph von Sternberg’s 1927 restored gangster classic “Underworld.”

Outdoor concerts between films also will return, Pearson said.

Tickets will go on sale in early June. Festival Passes are available now at the El Paso Community Foundation for $200, and offer pass holders a list of perks, including free parking, preferred entry through the Festival Pass Express Lane, invitation to a preview opening of “The Ten Commandments: Treasures from the Production Archives,” an invitation to the Opening Night screening and after-party, and any film scheduled during this year’s Plaza Classic 11-day schedule. Learn more at www.plazaclassic.com