For the Sag Harbor Cinema’s final pre-opening film series, Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, its founding artistic director, has put together a roster of 10 films that pay tribute to moviegoing as a collective experience, and to the theaters where cinematic adventures unfold. From Buster Keaton’s 1928 silent film “The Cameraman” to Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 “Inglorious Basterds” to Bill Morrison’s 2017 “Dawson City: Frozen Time,” the selections chart the history and power of film.
“Here Comes the Cinema!” will kick off on Monday, the third anniversary of the fire that destroyed the old theater, with a free 7 p.m. screening of “Cinema Paradiso” at Bay Street Theater. Giuseppe Tornatore’s Oscar-winning film is a story about the friendship between a young boy and the town projectionist. Drawn to the theater in a small Sicilian village just after World War II, the boy, who later in life becomes a prominent movie director, is exposed to the wonders of film by his mentor.
As a way to acknowledge the first responders and the outpouring of community support, Bay Street and the cinema will hold a reception at 6 featuring hot cider, mulled wine, and a visit from Santa Claus. A conversation between Bill Collage, a screenwriter and producer from Sag Harbor, and Ms. Vallan will follow the screening.
“Part of the reason to rebuild a cinema, and a cinema with a history of the Sag Harbor Cinema, is because we believe that cinema is a shared experience,” said Ms. Vallan. “And we believe that movies are best experienced in rooms with many other people.”
“Since cinema and movie theaters have been such a frequent topic of interest for filmmakers, especially the filmmakers of the New Hollywood generation, I thought that dedicating a series to the glory of movie houses and all the different things that can happen in them was a fun idea.”
Directors have used movie theaters in a variety of inventive ways. In Woody Allen’s “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” Cecilia (Mia Farrow) escapes to the movies from her lonely existence. When Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), the lead character in her favorite film, literally steps off the screen and into her life, a series of plot twists both romantic and ultimately heartbreaking ensues.
Tsai Ming-liang’s “Goodbye Dragon Inn” is set during the last screening at a historic but decrepit Taipei movie theater. A variety of subplots develop around the few people at the cinema, among them a ticket seller who searches in vain for the projectionist to give him a steamed bun, a Japanese tourist hoping for a sexual encounter, and one of the actors who appeared in the film “Dragon Inn,” who watches it with tears in his eyes.
In Peter Bogdanovich’s “Targets,” a brutal killer’s shooting spree leads him to a drive-in theater, where a retiring horror film icon, played by Boris Karloff, is making a promotional appearance. “The Last Picture Show,” Mr. Bogdanovich’s elegy for a dying Texas town, includes the final screening at the local movie house.
In Preston Sturges’s “Sullivan’s Travels,” an audience of convicts watches a Disney cartoon as an escape from the Great Depression, while in “Inglorious Basterds,” the climactic scene involves the deliberate destruction by Resistance fighters of a Paris theater where Hitler and Goebbels are in the audience.
The Cuban Missile Crisis frames “Matinee,” Joe Dante’s biting satire about a B-movie producer (John Goodman) whose various harebrained attempts to promote his new science fiction shocker (“Mant” — “half man, half ant, all terror!”) are overshadowed by the looming crisis.
In “The Cameraman,” Keaton plays a photographer who abandons his metier to become a news cameraman in the hope of winning the affections of a secretary in the newsreel department at MGM.
In a class by itself is “Dawson City: Frozen Time,” which combines a fascinating true story about the discovery of 533 silent film reels in Yukon permafrost — 50 years after their 1929 burial — with the footage itself, much of which, having been shot on flammable nitrate film, is decayed, like Dawson City itself, which went from a Gold Rush boomtown to a modest encampment.
Combined with a score by the composer Alex Somers, the film bridges the gap between documentary, experimental cinema, and suspense. It also uses a number of silent film techniques, including intertitles instead of narration.
The screenings will take place at Bay Street Theater, the Ross School’s senior lecture hall, and Pierson High School. Discussions with guest speakers, among them Eric Fischl, Laurie Anderson, Ed Burns, and Mr. Morrison, will follow each show. While the first screening is free, reservations are required at sagharborcinema.org. Tickets to the other programs are $15.
The new Sag Harbor Cinema is expected to open in the spring.
