For those four decades, Ewing helped curate two to three showings a day, from cultish horror classics to obscure Eastern European flick, to returns of American icons—reels other theaters didn't have the capacity or intention to show.
Next June, Ewing's career at Cinematheque comes to an end when he retires.
Like thousands of theaters throughout the U.S., the Cinematheque took its share of a beating during the pandemic years, when Ewing first considered retirement. With a 45 percent drop in attendance, Ewing cut the usual guest speaker slots, and fought through budget setbacks to keep the theater, which is backed by the Cleveland Institute of Art, operating with its reasonably priced $11 ticket fee.
Ewing's egalitarian approach to art—that everyone should be able to see great film—is precisely how he aims to wrap up the final act spearheading Cinematheque.
"I would say that the theater's purpose didn't change" since 2020, Ewing, 72, told Scene on Monday. "I mean, I didn't want to change my mission. And, well, I'm an old guy who's set in his ways."
In 1984, the same year the VHS gave moviegoers a reason to stay couch-locked, Ewing and two friends, Ron Holloway and George Gund III, founded the Cinematheque and started screening classic films at Case Western Reserve the year after. By 1986, with interest from CIA, the three relocated to a theater space in University Circle, with two screens and 616 seats. (It was closed in 2015.) Today, Ewing operates a 300-seat operation in CIA's George Gund Building near Euclid Avenue.
As far as any continuity to the thousands of films Ewing's showed since then, there's not much. Though there's been a preference, he said, for those already vetted (by the Cleveland International Film Festival, by New York's Tribeca, by Cannes) there's been the high brow—a screening of the seven-hour, black-and-white Sátántangó — —to the middle-brow — airings of Wes Anderson and Greta Gerwig — and more.
Such commitment to the silver screen has garnered Ewing some high praise and accolades. He won a Cleveland Arts Prize in 1995. And in 2010, he was christened a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters of the Republic of France. It's hard to confirm that awards mean much to Ewing, who, nearing retirement, is still prone to ignore self-aggrandizement and opt instead to talk out-of-print 35mm reels.
"When you see something on the big screen, you submit to the movie more than when you see it at home," Ewing said. "There's no cell phone. No tweet coming in. No sandwich calling you from the refrigerator."
Oddly enough, save for the movie poster sketches and Super 8 shorts he made in college at Denison University, Ewing never felt seriously compelled to get behind the camera himself. He felt, instead, the film world already had its nice collection of greats: the Steven Spielbergs, the Federico Fellinis. "I don't think the word needs another mediocre filmmaker like me," he said.
Ewing said he plans to round off the season playing crowdpleasers, like All Quiet on the Western Front and some "bucket list" items he'd been saving until now, like a 35mm print of Kenneth Anger's 1963 Scorpio Rising, a 30-minute short about leather-clad gay Neo Nazis in sixties New York City. ("The only print in existence," Ewing said.)
And other than keeping his health in check, and spending time with grandchildren, Ewing said retirement might finally be the time he succumbs to the home video, per se.
"My and my wife rent stuff now and again, but not much," he said. "I do have a handful of BluRays. Maybe when I'm retired I'll watch some of them."
Ewing's last day will be in mid-June of 2024. CIA said they'll begin a national search for his replacement before the end of the year.
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