INTRODUCTION AND THANKS
Thank you very much, Jon, for that kind and generous introduction. And I am sure I can speak on behalf of all cinephiles in thanking you most gratefully for all your superb efforts as the inaugural director of the IU Cinema. Your impeccable taste, technical perfectionism, and sheer tireless energy established the reputation of this cinema from the outset as one the nation’s finest art house college cinemas.
And this great legacy has been most ably continued by Alicia since assuming the directorship in 2021. She has expanded it, bringing a sharpened focus on media industry studies and ensuring that the cinema remains a vital, inclusive space for all voices. The "Secret Screening" tonight and the "15 Years, 15 Hits" series are testaments to her creativity and commitment to these principles.
I also want to acknowledge the hundreds of generous donors, some of whom are here tonight, whose gifts have done so much to enhance the vibrancy of the cinema, and to highlight the Jorgensen family, whose generosity established the lecture series that has brought some of the most revered doyens of the cinematic world to Bloomington. And I want to recognize those who too often go unheralded – the Cinema’s staff members, projectionists, and volunteers whose unseen dedicated and essential work makes the magic of this place possible. Institutions like this do not run on projection bulbs and pixels alone; they run on the passion of people.
FILM AS ART
It is an enormous pleasure to be here once again in this magnificent space on the 15th anniversary of its opening. It has over that time become one of the most vibrant centers of the arts on IU’s Bloomington campus.
Standing here tonight, bathed in the glow of the screen that has illuminated so many thousands of great and memorable films, I recall a phrase I used when dedicating this building in 2011. I said that while we live in an age of small screens—of televisions, computers, and especially the devices in our pockets—there is a profound difference in the "Big Screen."1 As our inaugural guest Peter Bogdanovich, to whom I had the great honor of awarding an IU honorary doctorate while he was here, memorably observed, "If you don’t see a film on a big screen, you haven’t really seen it."
Tonight, as we mark the 15th anniversary of the Indiana University Cinema, we celebrate not just a building, but the realization of a vision. It is a vision that emphatically asserts that the cinema is not merely entertainment or frivolous distraction; it is the quintessential art form of the modern age. At the groundbreaking ceremony for the renovation that transformed this space in 2009, I said:
”… film can be every bit as profound and sublime as the greatest literary works, poems, paintings, operas or symphonies.
Has alienation ever been better or more unsettlingly portrayed than in Antonioni’s L’Avventura?
Has the fleeting impermanence of human life ever been better captured than by Bergman’s Wild Strawberries?
Francois Truffaut’s Jules et Jim is as profound a statement as to the nature of love and passion between men and women as any in literature.
No one can leave Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris without being deeply moved by its portrayal of humanity asserting itself against the vastness of the universe.
Is there a better portrait of the hardening of the human heart than Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather?
Has mental disintegration been more poignantly though beautifully portrayed than in Federico Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits?
Has the corrupting and corrosive power of totalitarianism been more devastatingly presented than in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist?”2
GENESIS OF A VISION
The origins of this cinema go back nearly two decades. In my Inaugural Address as President in 2007,3 I spoke of IU’s glorious traditions in the arts and humanities, and in particular, of the need to match our university's legendary scholarly reputation in the study of film with a facility truly worthy of it.
For decades, IU had been home to some of the world’s most renowned faculty in film studies—scholars like Jim Naremore and Peter Bondanella, whose work on Kubrick, Welles, and Fellini set the international standard. And we possessed some of the finest specialized collections of films. Yet, we lacked a venue that could serve as what one might call a laboratory of film, increasingly essential to education, research and scholarship in film at the highest levels. We had superb facilities to support scholars and performers in the arts - the manuscripts of the Lilly Library; the masterpieces of the Eskenazi Museum of Art and the other IU museums and collections; the stages of the Musical Arts Center, the Auditorium, and the theaters. But for the art of the moving image, we had no temple.
And so, I announced in my inaugural address that we would repurpose the long-shuttered old University Theatre constructed in 1941 as a cinema. It was a decision to honor the past—preserving the beautiful 1930s murals by Thomas Hart Benton that still grace this space—while decisively stepping into the future with state-of-the-art technology - 4K projection, 35mm and 16mm capabilities, and a sound system certified by THX to the highest industry standards.
And 15 years ago, almost to this day, the IU Cinema opened its doors to the world.
A DECADE AND A HALF OF EXCELLENCE
Over the last decade and a half, this cinema has become one of the finest university cinemas in the country. No less a cinematic immortal than Meryl Streep said of it, “The IU Cinema has one of the finest projection houses I have ever seen.” It has hosted more than 300,000 patrons. It has screened thousands of films, from the silent era to the avant-garde present, and from the most joyful to the most challenging. And it has been used in the education programs of nearly every school and department on the campus and beyond. Student orchestras from the Jacobs School of Music have brought silent masterpieces like Metropolis roaring back to life. To experience a film in this way—with the visceral power of a live orchestra—is to experience the art form at its absolute zenith.
A pantheon of cinematic legends have been welcomed to this very stage through the Jorgensen Guest Filmmaker Series. The IU Cinema has hosted the incomparable Meryl Streep, whose grace and intellect captivated us all; the visionary and formidable Werner Herzog who I had the honor of interviewing on this stage; the pioneering Ava DuVernay; the iconoclastic John Waters; the Protean Kevin Kline – one of IU’s own who learnt his trade also on this very stage; and the master of Australian cinema, Peter Weir. The composer Nathan Johnson was a recent visitor, and the acclaimed actor and director Michael Shannon will soon be a guest.
This continues the great tradition of bringing the practitioners of the craft into direct dialogue with our students. These are not merely celebrity appearances; they are masterclasses. They are opportunities for our students to understand that art is made by people—people with discipline, vision, and the courage to tell the truth.
THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE
The challenge for the IU Cinema in the future will be to remain a place where the most challenging and diverse films, old and new, are shown in the face of relentless pressures for conformity, mediocrity, and homogeneity in the film industry, and of waves of censoriousness of all types that periodically sweep societies. What is a masterpiece one year, is banned or shunned the next. Universities are not safe spaces. They are places where all preconceptions and orthodoxies should be vigorously challenged and debated, where all voices should be heard, but in an environment both serious and civil. For in the art of film, the IU Cinema must be a beacon that preserves and treasures these principles.
Thank you very much.
SOURCES
1. Michael A. McRobbie, “The Difference the Big Screen Makes: The Dedication of the IU Cinema” (speech, IU Cinema, Bloomington, IN, January 27, 2011), https://universitychancellor.iu.edu/speeches/select-speeches/2011/2011-01-27-cinema-dedication.html.
2. Michael A. McRobbie, “Building on a Glorious IU Tradition: Breaking New Ground in the Arts and Humanities” (speech, University Theatre Steps, Bloomington, IN, October 17, 2009), https://universitychancellor.iu.edu/speeches/select-speeches/2009/2009-10-17-cinema-groundbreaking.html.
3. Michael A. McRobbie, “Endurance, Excellence, and the Energy of Change at Indiana University” (speech, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, October 18, 2007), https://universitychancellor.iu.edu/speeches/state-of-university/2007.html.
