Ever find yourself getting a little evangelical about the movies you love? Cinema Ecclesia might be the series for you.
The new film program from Justin Dobies is unlike others locally in a number of key ways—one being that the screenings take place on Saturday mornings, with doors opening at 10 a.m., and another being that movies are screened at the Minneapolis’s Howard Conn Theater, which is attached to Plymouth Congregational Church.
(Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of the Conn: “Nobody has!” Dobies laughs.)
A Minnesota native, Dobies is back in town after spending several years in L.A, where, among other work, he appeared in Dear White People and did stunts for Avengers: End Game. He’ll make his directorial debut this fall with a “tender, father-son drama” starring Tim Robbins that films right here in Minnesota.
In the meantime, there’s Cinema Ecclesia, which he’s billing as a “Saturday morning movie church.” The series kicks off this Saturday, with a screening of the 1940s screwball comedy His Girl Friday starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. There will be pastries (from Patisserie Margo in Edina) and coffee (from Big Watt Beverage Co.).
We caught up with Dobies to talk making movies in Minnesota, the new series, and the fun of forcing films on your friends. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Racket: I talk about this all the time with friends, but I feel like we are so spoiled with film here in the Twin Cities—for a flyover state, we really punch above our weight in terms of theaters and series and screenings. What made you want to do this new series?
Justin Dobies: Well one, I love movies, and I love showing movies that I like. And yeah, the Twin Cities has a very robust landscape for reparatory cinema, but there can also never be too much cinema, in my opinion. And also, so often for a classic film, you have to go out, you see it at night, and especially for younger viewers with older cinema, you’ve gotta make sure everyone is awake and ready to engage. So some of that is: Come out on Saturday morning, you get to start your day right, you get to have great coffee, good pastries, join a communal setting.
And then I think, in a larger sense, film literacy is vital to the success of the industry. We want to get away from these sorts of pure dopamine hits. I feel like great art gives you something, but also demands something of you, and it’s the wrestling with that tension that produces meaning. For the kinds of films that I’m interested in making, you want to make sure you’re still cultivating that audience, so I think that’s also a part of it.
I hadn’t considered the timing as being a little more friendly for younger viewers—are you envisioning this as a family-friendly thing where people get out of bed, grab the kids, and go see a movie?
Well, I don’t want to say that it’s not family-friendly, and the first four that I’ve picked out are all—I mean, His Girl Friday is fantastic, fun, zippy, all that, but also it’s heavy, and it talks about journalistic ethics and and there are some very real things in it. The Red Shoes is, like, a psychological thriller, and ultimately you’ve got a Black Swan thing going on. A Colt Is My Passport is just a fun movie across the board. And then Hiroshima Mon Amour is a reckoning with national themes of grief and unfathomable devastation and all these things through the lens of this couple in one night, made shortly after the dropping of the atomic bombs. It’s kind of this fascinating historical grappling with events that are actually larger than ourselves.
I’m starting it with unique, significant films that play with or expand some aspect of cinematic tradition or technique. And then hopefully I’ll start programming more series. Right now it’s sort of like, “Here’s four films! If this crashes and burns, we’re out!” [Laughs.]
I once did a summer backyard movie series with an ex, and the way we came up with the title for our “series” was more or less that we picked the movies we wanted to screen and then forced an overarching theme that connected them. It was like, “What’s a thing we can technically say these all have in common to make it a series?” But really it was just: movies I want to make sure my friends have seen.
That’s kind of the real thing. I have friends who were like, “We should just do our own weekend film festival” and have everyone the things you want everyone else to have seen. We haven’t yet pulled it off, but we will.
OK so this theater that you’re in—this is inside a church? I was thinking to myself, “Huh, I’ve never heard of the Howard Conn Theater.”
Nobody has! It’s an auditorium that’s attached to this congregational church, which as I understand it is also kind of a community center. When I was there, the whole lobby was filled with food donations for families that are sheltering in place. The way I’m thinking about it right now is sort of location agnostic, but this was a good place to start.
It really works. “Saturday morning movie church” is, I think, a good hook.
That’s what I was calling it for friends: We’re going to start a Saturday morning movie church. And then it was like… I have to make it clear that it’s not a church. It’s not faith movies.
No Veggie Tales.
Yeah, which is why on the website I put in “Not a church, just a cult.” I hope people think that I haven’t been too blasphemous.
You spent a lot of time in L.A. in recent years, and I know this film series isn’t the only thing that brought you back to Minnesota. Can you talk a little bit about Gunnar on the Grassland Sea, the film you’re working on right now?
The film is a tender, father-son drama that takes place on a farm in the ’80s in Minnesota. It grapples with these big questions of death and estrangement and reconciliation and faith and mental illness, all in this small town that’s based on a real community in the expansive prairie. It stars Tim Robbins, which is pretty fun and very exciting.
The script was an Academy Nicholl semifinalist, and got all these glowing reviews from the Black List, and we’ve been bringing together a lot of really incredible Minnesota talent and some Minnesota expats; our production designer is this incredible man who was the original production designer on Twin Peaks and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. And he got his start at the Children’s Theater, working production design. We’re bringing all these Minnesotans back for the film, and then hiring local Minnesotans to make sure that we’re investing in the local ecosystem in general.
Cinema Ecclesia
When: Saturday, May 9; doors at 10 a.m., screening at 10:30 a.m.
And then: Upcoming screenings of A Colt Is My Passport, The Red Shoes, and Hiroshima Mon Amour take place on the second Saturday of each month
Where: Howard Conn Theater, 1900 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis
Tickets: $12.50, available here
